When we create or share a document – whether a simple text, complex spreadsheet or professional presentation – we make a choice that goes far beyond the file extension. This is because the format gives us, or takes away, control over the content.

This post compares the Open Document Format (ODF) with proprietary formats such as DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. The comparison is not just about compatibility, but also about freedom, security, costs, transparency, and our long-term digital future.

We have already discussed ODF, and we will continue to do so until its 10th anniversary as an ISO/IEC standard in May 2026, because it is the only open standard available to users. We hope that an increasing number of users will understand how important it is for them to use it to have complete and lasting control over the content they have created, i.e. for their digital freedom, rather than for those of us who support it.
ODF is the native format of LibreOffice and other programmes that use the LibreOffice Technology platform. These programmes offer the same functionality, flexibility, security, robustness and interoperability as applications that promote proprietary formats, but without the lock-in strategy.

Incidentally, even so-called open-source applications (read their AGPL licence to understand why we say “so-called”) handle documents in ODF format, yet continue to promote their own formats, preventing users from having full control over their content – because this would jeopardise their business strategy.

So, what are proprietary formats?

They are developed and controlled by a single company and are typically only fully supported within that company’s ecosystem. Common examples include .docx, .xlsx and .pptx (Microsoft), as well as .pages, .numbers and .key (Apple) and .gdoc, .gsheet and .gslides (Google). While the specifications for these formats may be public, this does not mean they are completely open, as support is always limited by what the provider allows or documents, and is dictated by their commercial strategies.

Comparison between ODF and proprietary formats

1. Control and vendor lock-in

ODF

• Completely open and standardised
• Anyone can implement or use it without legal restrictions
• The user, not the software provider, controls the documents

Proprietary formats

• Designed and controlled by a single provider
• File characteristics and behaviour may change without notice
• Users are often forced to update their software in order to access their documents

Example: If Microsoft changes how DOCX handles embedded fonts or custom styles, users of older versions of Microsoft software or compatible applications may have difficulty viewing or reading files.

2. Interoperability and compatibility

ODF

• Designed with interoperability in mind
• Promotes consistency in formatting and behaviour across different platforms and software
• Facilitates the development of a multi-vendor ecosystem

Proprietary formats

• Optimised for performance within the vendor’s software
• Third-party implementations often encounter compatibility issues
• File rendering may vary depending on the platform, particularly for advanced formatting

Example: A spreadsheet with complex macros in .xlsx format that works correctly with Excel may not work, or may lose functionality, when used with LibreOffice Calc or Google Sheets …

By helping to translate and market LibreOffice around the world, native language projects bring enthusiasm and passion to the global community. Here’s what they did in 2024…

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Armenian

In 2024, the Armenian translation of LibreOffice reached 100% thanks to the efforts of Tigran Zargaryan. The suite was offered in Armenian for the first time. In addition, he ensured that the strings in the LibreOffice UI-master, website, Android Viewer and Help also reached 100% translated.

In appreciation for Tigran’s work, TDF invited him to join the LibreOffice Conference 2024 in Luxembourg using the foundation’s travel support programme.

Czech

Throughout the year, Czech speakers worked on keeping the translation of LibreOffice’s UI complete, and the Help content around 95%. They presented the software at booths at two events: InstallFest in Prague in April, and LinuxDays in Prague in October.

They supported LibreOffice users on the Czech Ask site, and maintained social media accounts including X (Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. They also introduced a new Mastodon account.

Czech speakers produced many translated user guides in 2024, including the Getting Started Guide 24.8, Writer Guide 24.2 and Impress guide 7.5. And throughout the year they maintained the Czech LibreOffice website.

Danish

Speakers of Danish brought the user interface translation of LibreOffice up to 100%, while the Help content approached 100% (that goal was finally reached two months into 2025). They also translated the subtitles for LibreOffice videos covering features in new major releases.

Dutch

Dutch-speaking community members supported users by answering questions on the Ask LibreOffice website and mailing lists. They also translated the following guidebooks: the Calc Guide for LibreOffice 7.6 (translated and published in January); the Writer Guide for LibreOffice 24.2 (March); the Calc Guide for LibreOffice 24.2 (June); the Draw guide for LibreOffice 24.2 (July); the Impress Guide for LibreOffice 24.2 (July); the Getting Started Guide for LibreOffice 24.2 (August); the Impress Guide for LibreOffice 24.8 (October); the Draw Guide for LibreOffice 24.8 (December); the Writer Guide for LibreOffice 24.8 (December); and the Math Guide for LibreOffice 24.8 (December).

On Weblate, the community managed to keep up with the changes of the UI, maintaining it at 100% translated. Although the Help content kept growing they were able to maintain it at 100% translated.

Community members also set up a stand at the NLLGG in May 2024 – a conference of the Dutch Linux community. There, LibreOffice users could obtain information and ask questions about LibreOffice, whether or not in conjunction with a Linux operating system.

They also had a stand at the LocHal open source event in November 202 – another conference of the Dutch Linux community.

Finnish

There was ongoing translation of the LibreOffice user interface and (to a lesser extent) Help, along with ongoing recruitment of volunteers on the vapaaehtoistyo.fi online platform. In …

Consider the history of control over user files, whether for organisations or individuals

Think about all the documents you have created in your lifetime: School assignments. Work presentations and reports. Household budgets. Letters. Perhaps even a personal diary or your CV.

Now imagine this: a few years go by, and when you try to open one of those files, it doesn’t work. The software has disappeared. Or it has been updated and no longer supports that format. Or you have to pay to unlock it.

It’s not just frustrating. It’s a real problem. That’s why the Open Document Format (ODF) was created: it’s a file format that allows computers to save documents such as letters, spreadsheets and presentations. You can recognise these files by their extensions: .odt for text files, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

What makes ODF special is that it is an open, transparent format that doesn’t hide anything from users. This means that anyone can use it freely; no company owns or controls it; and it is designed to work with different software, even years later. In short, it gives you control over your documents.

Let’s look at some everyday situations in which ODF can be useful:

Long-term access: you write your memoirs or your family history. Ten years later, you want to read or share them. With ODF, you don’t have to worry about the software becoming unavailable or obsolete.

Barrier-free education: A teacher asks students to submit their assignments digitally. With ODF, there is no need to purchase expensive software, as you can use a free tool such as LibreOffice instead.

Job search and consulting: create your CV in an open format so that anyone, regardless of their operating system (Windows, macOS or Linux) or application, can open it without encountering any formatting errors. You don’t even have to buy the software.

Sharing files with other users: you can send a document to a colleague or family member and they can open it without any problems, regardless of the programme they use. This is the advantage of a format that does not “belong” to a single company.

Public services: official documents in an open format can be accessed by everyone forever without them having to purchase or update software.

Unfortunately, most people forego all this because they use formats such as .docx (Word) or .xlsx (Excel). These are proprietary formats exclusively owned by Microsoft and can change at any time depending on their business strategies. Microsoft may require a subscription fee for a specific version, as older files may not be compatible with newer ones.

Proprietary formats can also cause problems when documents are opened with a different version of the same application, as the text and images may move and the document may look different. Sometimes, files do not open because the format is not recognised. This is not only annoying, but also risky if the file is important.

This is known as …

In 2024, The Document Foundation and its global LibreOffice community undertook a variety of marketing initiatives aimed at increasing visibility, fostering community engagement, and driving adoption of LibreOffice

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

LibreOffice and Open Source Conference 2024 in Luxembourg

A major highlight of TDF’s 2024 marketing activities was the LibreOffice and Open Source Conference, held from October 10 to 12 in Luxembourg. The annual event brought together contributors from around the world, including developers, designers, documentation writers, translators, and marketers.

Marketing efforts for the conference included:

• A targeted social media campaign promoting the event’s location, speakers, and agenda.
• Outreach to local technology communities and universities in Luxembourg to boost participation.
• The creation of promotional graphics and materials highlighting the conference themes and goals.
• Live updates and content shared across LibreOffice’s social channels to engage a remote audience.

The conference acted as a vital showcase of LibreOffice’s progress, community strength, and future plans.

“Month of LibreOffice” Campaigns

Throughout May and November 2024, TDF organized its recurring “Month of LibreOffice” initiative. This campaign aimed to recognize and reward community contributors across various roles, including development, documentation, QA and marketing.

Participants who contributed during the campaign period were acknowledged through:

• Special edition badges awarded digitally.
• Public recognition via blog posts and social media.
• Incentives like stickers and merchandise shipped to selected contributors.

This initiative not only celebrated existing contributors but also attracted new participants interested in supporting open source software.

Launch of the LibreOffice Podcast Series

In November 2024, TDF launched its LibreOffice Podcast, a new platform to discuss topics related to LibreOffice and the wider world of open source software. The podcast aimed to:

• Share success stories from migrations to LibreOffice.
• Offer insights into FOSS marketing strategies.
• Feature interviews with developers and community leaders.
• Provide behind-the-scenes looks at the ongoing work within TDF.

The first episode focused on marketing strategies for FOSS, with discussions on how to engage institutions and governments in adopting LibreOffice.

Enhanced Social Media and Content Strategy

In 2024, TDF expanded and optimized its social media presence. Alongside its traditional platforms like Twitter (X) and Facebook, TDF increased its focus on:

• Mastodon: engaging the open-source community on federated social platforms.
• LinkedIn: Sharing professional success stories, including case studies on large-scale LibreOffice deployments.
• Regular posting of blog content, including release announcements, tutorials, and community spotlights.
• Short video clips and graphics to make content more accessible and visually engaging.

These efforts aimed to grow the project’s audience, particularly among decision-makers in public administration and enterprises.

Native Language Community Outreach

TDF placed a strong emphasis on supporting native language communities. The marketing …

An introduction to the Open Document Format

The documents we create today, whether reports, spreadsheets or presentations, are essential for communicating, sharing and storing knowledge. However, the format in which these documents are saved often goes unnoticed. This is where the Open Document Format (ODF) comes in. ODF is a technical standard and a tool that ensures documents remain accessible, editable and usable over time without being tied to a specific vendor or product.

Approved by OASIS as an open standard document format in May 2005 and by ISO/IEC in May 2006, ODF has been around for over 20 years. Despite 20 years having passed, most productivity software users are not familiar with the format and therefore do not use it, as it is not as widespread as its proprietary counterpart, Microsoft OOXML.

This means that a huge number of documents — equivalent to over 100 zettabytes of data in 2025 — are subject to the commercial strategies of a company and completely beyond the control of their authors. These authors may suddenly find themselves unable to manage their own content unless they use specific software.

This also means that the enormous wealth of information contained in these documents does not contribute to the growth of collective intelligence because they are limited in terms of interoperability due to being tied to a single, specific, proprietary software.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s touted backward compatibility feature prevents true innovation in document formats because the presence of proprietary elements from old binary formats, which are not included in the ODF standard, forces documents to remain with technologies that have long been obsolete and incompatible with future developments.

What is ODF?

ODF is an open standard for saving and exchanging office documents. It includes text files (.odt), spreadsheets (.ods), presentations (.odp), and other types of documents, such as drawings (.odg). Developed by OASIS, an organisation that promotes structured information standards, it was approved by ISO/IEC as the international standard ISO/IEC 26300 in 2006.

Put simply, ODF is a universal language for documents, ensuring they can be read and written by any compatible software without locking users into a single ecosystem.

To understand the importance of ODF, it is helpful to know how proprietary formats work. When a document is saved in a Microsoft format, such as .docx, or an Apple format, such as .pages, it is often designed to work best with that company’s software only. Over time, this can cause problems such as limited compatibility, vendor lock-in, and the risk of obsolescence if the proprietary format is abandoned or changed significantly, as older documents may become unreadable.

ODF avoids these problems. It is completely open and free, meaning that anyone can implement it in their software, and users can switch between tools without losing access to their files.

ODF is not limited to text documents, but includes a wide range of office document types, including .odt (OpenDocument Text) for text documents such as reports, letters and books; .ods (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) for data …

So we’re half-way through the Month of LibreOffice, May 2025. And already, 216 contributors have won cool LibreOffice sticker packs! Details on how to claim them will be provided at the end of the month, but if you don’t see your name (or username) on that page, it’s not too late to join…

How to take part

There are many ways you can help out – and you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a:

• Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.

• First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: Go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 11 and LibreOffice 25.2.3”.

• Drum Beater, spreading the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Mastodon, Bluesky or X (Twitter)! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.

• Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.

• Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.

• Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

So, two more weeks to go! We’ll be posting more updates on this blog and our Mastodon, Bluesky and X (Twitter) accounts…

The LibreOffice Google Summer of Code projects have been selected for 2025.

• Adam Seskunas – Implement Report Builder in C++: replacing the current Java-based Report Builder with a new solution will improve maintainability and remove one of the last remaining dependencies on Java.
• Karthik Godha – New dialog to edit Table Styles: Writer and Calc have a feature called AutoFormat styles with the possibility to add custom styles. This project will make it possible to edit existing table styles.
• Devansh Varshney – BASIC IDE code auto-completion: rudimentary auto-completion for BASIC macro authors is already available, but this project will make the feature much more helpful.
• Manish Bera – Python code auto-completion: currently there is no support at all for Python auto-completion when developing scripts for LibreOffice, so this will be quite a welcome addition.
• Mohamed Ali Mohamed – Rust UNO language binding: last year LibreOffice received support for Lua and the latest .NET and now it’s time to make it possible to use the API with Rust.
• Ujjawal Kumar – Import Markdown files into Writer: Markdown is a rather popular markup language for quickly formatting text in blog content, comments, chats and more. Requests to support it have increased recently, so it makes sense to tackle it.
• Shardul Vikram Singh – Rework Impress slideshow to use DrawingLayer primitives: this is one of those projects that are incomprehensible to most users, but really important for the long term maintenance of the code.

Good luck to the contributors – we appreciate their work on these important features and improvements! And thanks to our mentors for assisting them: Thorsten Behrens, Stephan Bergmann and Sarper Akdemir (allotropia); Rafael Lima; Jonathan Clark, Heiko Tietze, Xisco Faulí, Michael Weghorn and Hossein Nourikhah (TDF).

Between August 25 and September 1, contributors will submit their code, project summaries, and final evaluations of their mentors. Find out more about the timeline here, and check out more details about the projects on this page.

Our two main websites are vital sources of information for The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice software. We also use our social media channels to raise awareness about our work, share information and encourage new contributors to join us

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

TDF website

The Document Foundation website provides general information about the foundation (overview, statutes, code of conduct, financials and reports) and its governance (board of directors, membership committee, members, advisory board, and engineering steering committee), and about LibreOffice certification, including a list of certified developers, and professionals for migrations and trainings.

During 2024, the foundation’s website was visited 98,499 times, with 146,456 page views – a slight reduction in visits but also a slight growth in page views from 2023. Continent-wise, the largest chunk of visits were from Europe (52%), followed by North America (24%) and Asia (16%). And regarding software: the most visits were from PCs using the Windows (65%) operating system, followed by GNU/Linux (10%) and macOS (8%) and devices uses Android (6.2%), while for browsers: Chrome had 39%, followed by Firefox (16%) and Microsoft Edge (15%).

LibreOffice website

The LibreOffice website provides information about the office suite and the document format, the various download options, how to get help, how to contribute to the project, events where users can get to know the LibreOffice community, and how to make a donation to support the project and the community.

In 2024, we continued to make improvements and tweaks to the website, updating the “Discover” and “New Features” sections of the site to reflect new versions of the software.

During 2024, the English-language LibreOffice website was visited 19,298,517 times (a 0.6% gain over 2023), with 46,065,236 page views (a 0.1% gain). Most visits were from Europe (52%), followed by Asia (20%), North America (15%) and South America (9%), from PCs using the Windows operating system (82%), followed by macOS (6%) and Linux (23%). Regarding web browsers, Chrome was the most popular (41%), followed by Microsoft Edge (29%) and Firefox (13%).

Blogs

TDF’s blogs (like this one) are essential for communicating activities inside and around the project, including new releases of LibreOffice, community events and support for other free and open source initiatives. In 2024, we used them to post regular interviews with community members and provide updates from team members about documentation, marketing, QA, design and more.

Blogs were also maintained by various native language communities including Japanese, Spanish, German and others. Thanks to the hard work of community members, we had press releases, tips and other articles translated into many languages, and picked up by local media organisations.

These native language blogs complement the information provided by the main blog in English, and by the two blogs managed by members of the design and the quality assurance projects, which provide updates about activities for the upcoming major releases …

Quality Assurance (QA) is a cornerstone of the LibreOffice project, thanks to the activity of a large number of volunteers and the feedback of many users who help in reporting bugs and regressions

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

QA team work

In 2024, the QA team triaged thousands of bugs, bisected hundreds of regressions, and answered questions from countless bug reporters. As one of the most visible groups directly responding to end users, the QA team must be nimble and able to adapt to changes. In addition, it must deal with specific requests for help from other teams.

The QA team meets regularly on IRC on the #libreoffice-qa channel, which is the best medium for discussing bugs and regressions. The IRC channel provides an excellent opportunity to remain in close contact with team members, and to tutor new members in the art and skill of LibreOffice QA. This is bridged to the Telegram group.

During 2024, 5351 bugs were reported by 2463 users, which means 103 new bugs were reported every week on average. The QA team prepared monthly reports about their activity and posted on the QA blog.

Top 10 bug reporters

• Eyal Rozenberg (211)
• Gabor Kelemen (193)
• Mike Kaganski (137)
• Telesto (86)
• Regina Henschel (85)
• Xisco Faulí (82)
• Stéphane Guillou (78)
• peter josvai (75)
• Rafael Lima (72)
• Heiko Tietze (54)

Triaging

During 2024, 5086 bugs were triaged by 328 people. The top 10 bug triagers were:

• Stéphane Guillou (stragu) (762)
• Buovjaga (684)
• m_a_riosv (499)
• Heiko Tietze (374)
• V Stuart Foote (241)
• Mike Kaganski (232)
• Julien Nabet (186)
• Xisco Faulí (175)
• ady (144)
• Dieter (144)

Bibisecting

Also, during 2024, the QA team performed 561 bibisects of regressions by 30 people. The top 10 bisecters were:

• raal (121)
• Buovjaga (111)
• Stéphane Guillou (104)
• Xisco Faulí (91)
• Gabor Kelemen (24)
• Aron Budea (23)
• Timur (14)
• zcrhonek (10)
• Mike Kaganski (9)
• Justin L (8)

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