If you've been following the development of LibreOffice since it was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, you'll know that a great deal of effort has been put into cleaning up the source code. This has made the suite easier to compile, and, more importantly, it's easier for new contributors to get involved. Along the way, new features have been added and Microsoft Office compatibility has been improved, but by and large the software doesn't look or feel drastically different in 2017.

That's a good thing, of course – office suite users tend to value consistency and stability rather than shiny new widgets with every release. But there are some changes and new features that could really take LibreOffice up a level, and although they aren't available out of the box, with a bit of tweaking you can try them out. In this article, we'll show you some tips and tricks to get more out of LibreOffice, using features you may not have come across before.

Try a Tasty MUFFIN

In recent years, some LibreOffice users have been asking for a more "modern" user interface alternative to the regular toolbar layout. However, implementing such a change is no easy task. The LibreOffice design community [1] has to constantly juggle the demands of various types of users, some of whom like things exactly as they are and resist any change, and others who want the software to look and feel more like Microsoft Office. Whatever the design team does, someone will be unhappy.

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