It's been months since The Document Foundation announced support for Markdown in LibreOffice 26.2That version of the office suite It has arrivedAnd I wanted to try that support. To be honest, I tried it in the past, but a Windows problem (how unusual…) prevented me from understanding how it worked. With the stable version now available, I tried it again, and it certainly doesn't look bad.
First of all, let me explain why nothing was working for me in the betas: I was creating my documents the way I do in Linux, which is to create a new file on the desktop and name it, for example, test.md. The thing is, at least with Windows Notepad, simply adding an extension isn't enough, and LibreOffice 26.2 couldn't import the file. Opening the Notepad application and saving it as Markdown solved my problems.
Yes, I tried the Windows version for the simple reason that it's easier to download and install than on Linux, where we'll have to wait a little longer.
This is how Markdown works in LibreOffice 26.2
In the LibreOffice 26.2 release notes, in the Markdown sectionThey explain that you can import, export, and paste Markdown text. If you open a Markdown document, simply copy its formatted text and paste it into LibreOffice. It will be glued in the appropriate format..
But what interested me most was getting it to open .md files. After verifying that pasting the text did work, and understanding that the file had to be created with Notepad and saved with the .md extension to work in Windows, I created what you see in the header screenshot. To avoid having to rely on my memory, I went to our article on How to write in Markdown and I've been trying brand after brand.
As you can see, they work:
- The headings.
- Bold/italic/strikethrough text.
- Code blocks.
- Online code.
- Quotes.
- Lists, including to-do lists.
- Boards.
- Horizontal lines.
Of all the features that can be used, only mathematical formulas, highlighted text, exponents/subscripts, and the use of the tag are missing. Some viewers do support it. As a viewer, it behaves more or less like Okular from KDE. It's still far from Visual Studio Code, but the latter has extensions to expand its support.
Exporting fails?
What I haven't been able to do in my tests is export. The option doesn't appear in the File menu, so either I've missed something or it needs improvement.
To be honest, I think this support is useful if you want to have a program like a text editor without having to jump from one to another, or it will be useful when exporting is a possibility.