Today, February 10, The Document Foundation non-profit organization has proudly announced the release and immediate availability for download of the LibreOffice 5.1 open-source and cross-platform office suite for all supported platforms.

After being in development for the last three months or so, LibreOffice 5.1 comes today to a desktop environment near you with some of the most attractive features you've ever seen in an open-source office suite software product, no matter the operating system used. With this new stable release, the LibreOffice office suite becomes the number one free office suite for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows systems.

The release highlights of LibreOffice 5.1 include a redesigned user interface for improved ease of use, better interoperability with OOXML files, support for reading and writing files on cloud servers, enhanced support for the ODF 1.2 file format, as well as additional Spreadsheet functions and features. Of course, there are also a lot of under-the-hood improvements that we've already covered in a previous article.

"LibreOffice 5.1 is another step forward to fulfilling our vision of an office suite tailored on user needs and preferences," says Bjoern Michaelsen, a director at The Document Foundation (TDF) and a leading LibreOffice developer. "Since 2010, we have gone through different development cycles to clean up the code and make it more responsive. We are now at a stage where we are close to providing a better user interface."

What's new in LibreOffice 5.1

Taking a closer look at the new features implemented in LibreOffice 5.1, we can notice a completely reorganized graphical user interface that makes it more convenient and faster for users to access the software's commonly used features. There's now a new menu for each of LibreOffice's core components, such as Calc, Impress, Draw, and Writer. Furthermore, many of the menu commands and icons have been repositioned.

Interoperability with proprietary formats is again one of the most requested features for the open-source office suite, and LibreOffice 5.1 promises to add better support for documents created with proprietary office products, including Microsoft Office 2016 and Apple Keynote 6. Sheets created with the open-source Gnumeric spreadsheet editor are also better supported in LibreOffice 5.1.

Last but not least, LibreOffice 5.1 adds new Spreadsheet (Calc) functions, such as an improved formula engine with features like sticky row and column anchors, support for the ODF 1.2 format, interoperability with OOXML spreadsheets, and table structured references enhancements. Also, users can now access documents stored on remote file servers like Google Drive, Sharepoint, and Alfresco via the File menu.

Download LibreOffice 5.1 for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

LibreOffice 5.1 Release Highlights

LibreOffice 5.1 Impress

LibreOffice 5.1 Impress New Menus

LibreOffice 5.1 Writer