Open office or LibreOffice, which works better with NVDA?

[Mobeen Iqbal]

Hello everyone.

Given recent discussions on various mailing lists regarding LibreOffice
accessibility, I was wondering which office suite people find the most
accessible with NVDA. Open office, or LibreOffice. How accessible are
both office suites over all? Could either of them be used as a realistic
replacement for Microsoft Office? What issues/differences are people
encountering specifically when it comes to NVDA's Microsoft office
support, and support for the above third party office suites? Many
thanks in advance for any responses.

Very best wishes,

Mo.

[Zvonimir Stanecic]

Hi Mobeen,

Definitelly you can try Libreoffice as the feasible replacement.
Although there are some features missing from the NVDA side, for example
browse mode for documents, and quick navigation, majority of the
functions are usable, and it is faster compared to Microsoft office,
especially when navigating the edit boxes.

You can try it yourself and see that latest NVDA versions and
libreoffice are dramatically improved in terms of accesibility.

W dniu 22.03.2026 o 07:27, Mobeen Iqbal pisze:

[Quentin Christensen]

Here is a comparison I found on LibreOffice vs Open Office, last updated several weeks ago: https://openalternative.co/blog/libreoffice-vs-openoffice

Aside from any differences in functionality, I would highlight this quote from the text as a reason to strongly lean towards LibreOffice:

"OpenOffice's infrequent development leaves vulnerabilities unpatched. When a flaw is found in shared codebase, LibreOffice patches in days or weeks. OpenOffice might take months or years—if ever.

This security posture difference is defining. For anyone concerned with data safety, LibreOffice's active maintenance makes it the only responsible choice. Using software with known, unpatched vulnerabilities is unnecessary risk."

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[Jason J.G. White]

Quentin Christensen <que...@nvaccess.org> wrote:
>Here is a comparison I found on LibreOffice vs Open Office, last updated
>several weeks ago:

OpenOffice has been unmaintained for years, as far as I know. All of the
work is now taking place in LibreOffice, notably screen reader
accessibility improvements. The latter include enhancements specifically
for NVDA.

[Quentin Christensen]

Broadly, you're right, although evidently Open Office DO still put out releases now and then evidently.  Looking on the main OO site, the current version for download is 4.1.16: https://www.openoffice.org/download/

Digging up the release notes for that version (which took a little guessing as the release schedule page is out of date!) - I found that version came out on November 21 2025: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/AOO+4.1.16

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[Mobeen Iqbal]

Hi.

Many thanks for all the responses to this thread. I'll stick to
LibreOffice as that seems to be much more active/maintained. The last
version of open office that wasn't a security release seems to be a
version from 2023.

Very best wishes,

Mo.


On 22/03/2026 22:11, 'Jason J.G. White' via NVDA Screen Reader