Editing Documents and Files With LibreOffice

by Rex Djere on April 7, 2012

in Training

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1. The Basics

LibreOffice can be used to create and edit text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and databases. Editing is most often done in LibreOffice’s graphical mode, though some simple operations such as file conversions can be performed in LibreOffice’s non-graphical headless mode. Editing files is done in a similar way in all LibreOffice applications: by using the “Edit” option in the main menu. This option is highlighted in the figure below.

Figure Editing.1: The Edit Option in LibreOffice’s Main Menu

The Edit menu gives the user the ability to undo changes, redo changes, repeat changes, cut, copy, and paste text and pictures, select text and pictures, find text, replace text, and other important editing functions.

2. Collaborative Editing

A powerful feature being developed for LibreOffice beginning in 2012 is collaborative editing. This will allow multiple editors to simultaneously work on a LibreOffice document. A demonstration of this concept can be viewed here:


Collaboration in LibreOffice will be done using the Telepathy communications framework. Telepathy is a communications service that uses pluggable communications protocols to set up a communications channel between peers on a network. The communication is very similar to that used in instant messaging programs. For example, User A running LibreOffice on Computer A could establish a channel with User B running LibreOffice on Computer B. The could both edit the document OurDocument.odt at the same time, and both users would instantaneously see any changes. Michael Meeks, an employee of Novell, is a key figure who is coordinating a lot of the development work towards building the collaborative feature. A much more detailed analysis of how collaboration is being built can be found here:


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