LibreOffice, an off-shoot of OpenOffice founded by former contributors to the OpenOffice project in 2010, has just been updated to 3.5. Several new features are part of the update including a new grammar checking tool which is included in Writer.

The goal of the new utility is to check sentences for grammatical errors more accurately. False alarms have always been a problem. The changes, which are explained in a blog post on the LibreOffice website, aim to reduce the chance that unusual spacing or capitalization (such as that used in an abbreviation) is wrongly flagged as incorrect.

Other improvements to Writer include a revised header, footer and page break interface and an interactive real-time word count window.

Calc, which is the LibreOffice suite’s answer to Excel, has received upgrades as well. Maximum spreadsheet support has been increased to a staggering 10,000 sheets and conditional formatting can now handle an unlimited number of rules. Performance improvements have been made to help with opening documents from other office suites, as well.

Another major enhancement is the addition of an online update checker that will inform users when a new version of LibreOffice is available.

These are just the most eye-catching improvements. Check out the full press release for all the details.

Source: The Document Foundation