LibreOffice 5.2.5 Released, On the Road to 5.3

The Document Foundation today announced the availability of LibreOffice 5.2.5, the fifth update to the 5.2 line. The release announcement, without changelogs, seemed to more focus upon upcoming 5.3. LibreOffice 5.3 is said to be expected within the week, planned for February 1, 2017. That release will bring several celebrated new features and improvements such as a "Go to Page" jump, new Table Styles, and new hidden cell merger options.

For those wishing to update to 5.2.5 in hopes your bug is fixed, can download from the usual outlet. Unfortunately, you'll have to just upgrade to see because today's release didn't get its accompanying changelogs posted. There are plans for one more incremental update, 5.2.6 due sometime around the beginning of May. Today's announcement urged all users still using 5.1.* to make the upgrade to 5.2.

LibreOffice 5.3 was said to be expected February 1, and with it comes lots of new features and options. New to Writer is a handy "Go to Page" dialog that allows users to skip ahead to a specific page in any given document. Table styles in Writer can do new things like retaining edits and import or export ODF styles. Toolbar improvements include a new "small capitals" property and drawing tools previously only in Draw. Calc also got new tools like the Arrow toolbox as well as new functions, fractional number format, and easier customization of Default Cells Styles.

In Impress, a template selector now greets users and two new templates will make their debut in 5.3. Users will be able to link to a image if desired rather than embed it and several new arrow heads will also be introduced. PDF signature import/export was added as well as a new Safe Mode that starts LibO with a temporary new users so one might restore a broken configuration or recover a crashed document. That Document recovery dialog has been simplified greatly and Keyboard shortcuts will now be listed in the GUI menus. This is just a sample of the improvements coming in 5.3.

If you're still using LibreOffice 5.1, then you are urged to upgrade to 5.2. 5.2 users can probably just choose to wait a few more days for 5.3 or see the announcement for more options.