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