Collabora has updated its web-based office suite Collabora Online in the developer version CODE to version 26.04. The most important innovations: AI functions in Writer, Calc and Impress, Markdown import and export, expanded tools for document review and collaboration as well as improvements in spreadsheets, accessibility and Microsoft Office compatibility.
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CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition) is the freely available variant of Collabora Online. It also serves as a test bed for new functions that, after a maturity phase, will be incorporated into the commercially supported product version Collabora Online (COOL).
AI is moving into Writer, Calc and Impress
A focus of CODE 26.04 is AI. In Writer, the software helps you write, revise and rephrase texts. Calc gets functions that analyze tables and formulas and help with troubleshooting, for example. In Impress, longer texts can be summarized or converted into bullet points for slides. Collabora primarily sees the functions as an aid to everyday office tasks.
Writer also receives extensive tools for document checking. The software compares two versions of a document and highlights changes to text, images and tables. It also shows who changed something and when. There is also a revised interface for comments and change tracking, a search in the document navigator and a two-page view for long documents.
The new Markdown support is interesting for developers and technical editors. Documents can now be imported and exported in Markdown format. The software can use templates to automatically convert Markdown content into formatted documents. There is also a new JSON-based API for CSV conversions aimed at integrators and automation projects.
Calc is closer to Excel
The Calc spreadsheet also gets several new functions. Each user can view a spreadsheet individually without changing the filters and settings of the other editors. This means that different evaluations can be created in parallel in the same file. Calculated fields in pivot tables are also new: key figures such as margins or differences are created directly in the evaluation, without users having to create additional auxiliary columns.
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Collabora also adds several formulas known from Microsoft Excel: CHOOSECOLS, CHOOSEROWS, TEXTAFTER, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTSPLIT, HSTACK, VSTACK, DROP, EXPAND, TAKE, TOCOL, TOROW, WRAPCOLS and WRAPROWS. They are intended to facilitate data analysis and improve compatibility with XLSX files.
In the Impress presentation module, Collabora is introducing a function that allows the audience to automatically follow the speaker during an ongoing presentation. If you want, you can still browse through the slides yourself without disturbing the view of others. Also new are slide sections that can be used to structure larger presentations, as well as support for different slide sizes in one file.
Accessibility, operation and Office compatibility
Further changes concern accessibility and the user interface. This includes improvements to screen reader support and keyboard navigation, as well as additional automated testing to identify accessibility issues early. In the future, users will be able to make settings directly in the editor, and documents can be opened in reading mode by default. Collabora has also improved the display of PDF files and the selection of fonts.
Another focus remains interoperability with Microsoft Office. Collabora cites numerous improvements in handling DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. According to their own statements, the developers secured the changes with extensive automatic tests based on hundreds of thousands of documents. The announcement of CODE 26.04 lists all the details about the new features.
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