LibreOffice 25.8.5 Released with 62 Bug Fixes Across Writer, Calc, and Impress

The Document Foundation has rolled out LibreOffice 25.8.5, the fifth maintenance release in the 25.8 branch, delivering numerous bug fixes reported since version 25.8.4.

A significant portion of the improvements targets DOCX and PPTX compatibility. The update resolves problems with opening and saving files, including overlapping tracked changes in DOCX documents that required multiple “Accept All” or “Reject All” actions, layout disruptions after section breaks, and distorted images when importing Word files. It also fixes round-trip issues where documents saved in LibreOffice failed to reopen properly in Microsoft Office.

Impress sees enhanced PowerPoint interoperability as well. This release corrects invalid PPTX exports, animation glitches, missing OLE object data, broken internal hyperlinks, and errors involving stock charts and custom shapes. It also prevents crashes and memory leaks when switching PPT and PPTX presentations to notes view. Additionally, legacy VML elements in PPTX files are now imported as expected.

Writer benefits from better stability and layout accuracy. The update eliminates freezes triggered by certain documents, fixes spacing issues around continuous section breaks, resolves bullet style inconsistencies linked to indentation levels, and corrects problems with ruby text insertion. Spellchecking has been improved to properly detect abbreviations ending with periods and words that include non-ASCII apostrophes.

Calc performance has also improved. The release addresses hangs when formatting extremely small numbers as fractions, fixes XLOOKUP errors in horizontal searches involving empty cells, and ensures data providers are inserted into the correct sheet. COUNTIFS now processes empty cells correctly.

Beyond compatibility enhancements, version 25.8.5 resolves several crash scenarios, such as errors when saving ODS files after moving form controls and crashes caused by undoing shape drags while using modifier keys.

The update also tackles various interface issues, including missing icons in certain Windows AArch64 builds using Skia rendering, incorrect dark-mode color handling in charts and labels, and theme refresh inconsistencies in Base.

Export reliability has been improved as well. Dashed lines now export correctly to SVG instead of appearing solid, chart text no longer disappears in PDFs when using dark UI themes, and multi-page SVG content can be extracted properly from ODG files.

For a complete list of changes in LibreOffice 25.8.5, refer to the RC1 and RC2 release notes. The official announcement is here. The next maintenance update, 25.8.6, is planned for late March. The 25.8 series will receive support until June 12, 2026, after which it will reach end of life. The most recent major version of the suite is LibreOffice 26.2, released earlier this month.