How to make LibreOffice look more like Microsoft Office

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How to make LibreOffice look more like Microsoft Office

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A reader contacted me recently to ask how he could configure the LibreOffice interface to resemble that of Microsoft Office. He wanted to accomplish this task to finally make Linux his default operating system.

Naturally, I wanted to oblige with instructions on how to make this switch. For anyone wanting to move away from Microsoft’s Office suite (whatever the reason), LibreOffice is as solid a choice as you’ll find. 

Also: 5 stand-out LibreOffice features that make it my go-to office suite

LibreOffice is highly compatible with Microsoft Office and is also cross-platform, open-source, and flexible, illustrated perfectly by the software’s customizable user interface (UI). With LibreOffice, you have several choices for the UI, including:

  • Standard Toolbar
  • Tabbed
  • Single Toolbar
  • Tabbed Compact
  • Groupedbar Compact
  • Contextual Single

Believe it or not, changing up the LibreOffice interface is pretty easy.

Let me show you the way.

How to customize the LibreOffice UI

What you’ll need: The only thing you’ll need for this task is the latest version of LibreOffice installed on your operating system of choice. The software is available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and the process of customizing the UI is the same for each. 

Also: How to install Steam on Linux to start playing thousands of games

I’ll demonstrate the steps with version 24.8.1 installed on Pop!_OS Linux. Also, note I’m comparing LibreOffice to the office365.com UI.

One of the coolest things about the LibreOffice UI is that you can apply a different interface to each component (Writer, Calc, Presents, Base, and more). That flexibility means you can set interfaces individually if you like one UI for Writer but a different one for Calc. Since Writer is the tool I use the most, I’ll open Writer.

With LibreOffice Writer open, click View > User Interface. This will open a popup window, where you can select the UI option of you want.

The LibreOffice UI selector.

You can apply the new UI to just one LibreOffice component or all of them.

Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET

For me, the best UI combination is the Sidebar option, but that doesn’t even remotely align with the Office365.com UI. Your best option is to go with the Tabbed Compact UI, so select Tabbed Compact from the left side of the popup and then click either “Apply to Writer” or “Apply to All”. 

Also: How to customize the LibreOffice UI to best fit your style

If you want the tabbed UI to apply to all of the LibreOffice tools, click “Apply to All”, otherwise click “Apply to Writer”.

With LibreOffice, you can refine your customization further by opening the Customize popup. To do that, click the gear icon that should now be visible near the top left of the LibreOffice Writer window and select Customize.

Also: Rhino Linux’s latest release makes it the Swiss Army knife of Linux distributions

In the resulting popup, you can customize the Menus, Toolbars, and other options. You can select an available option in the left pane and move it to the right, or there are even more options in the Assigned Commands pane. You can also remove options from the Assigned Commands pane. You can do the same thing in the Toolbars tab.

The LibreOffice UI Customization tool.

The Sky’s the limit with how much you can customize the LibreOffice interface.

Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET

To further customize what toolbars are visible, click the gear icon again and then click Toolbars. You’ll see a rather large dropdown with several options. 

Also: How to refine your writing with LibreOffice’s statistical analysis tool

You can also select the Customize option and add or remove any item you want from the toolbars by adding it from the Available Commands to the Assigned Commands columns and then moving the newly added item up or down as needed.

The list of available toolbars that can be added to LibreOffice.

You can add as many or as few toolbars as needed.

Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET

Also: LibreOffice removes personal data from documents. Why that matters

It might take you a few minutes to get the LibreOffice UI layout to look exactly how you want it but with the help of all the various customizations, you can go full-on Picard and make it so.





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