Users are scared of change. And this is one of the reasons why many do not dare to leave Windows and Office and try other alternatives. For this reason, there are many developers working to bring familiar interfaces to users (for example, Windows-like Linux distros) with which to try to reduce this fear and encourage these users to make the leap towards other programs. And for this reason, today we are going to show you how, with a few simple steps, it is possible to convert LibreOffice into Microsoft Office, at least in terms of aesthetics.
LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite that was born from the bifurcation of OpenOffice code. This office suite wants to become one of the best alternatives to the quintessential Microsoft suite, Office. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet program and presentation software, among other tools.
However, users who try LibreOffice after spending time with Office complain that its interface is neglected and, in addition, that it is much more complicated than the one offered by Microsoft in its suite. However, if we miss the main Office interface when using The Document Foundation’s office suite, next we will see how to customize it so that it no longer is.
Install Office Icon Theme in LibreOffice
The first thing we must do to carry out this simple change is download the icon pack for LibreOffice. Although there are a large number of sources where we can find it, we recommend that you download it from the original site where it was first published and from where its maintenance has always been carried: from DeviantArt .
Starting with LibreOffice 6 , themes can be installed as extensions, which greatly simplifies the setup and startup of these themes. Also, it’s the safest way to do it, since themes don’t require Administrator permissions.
To install the theme, open the main LibreOffice window, and select the menu Tools> Extension manager and add from here.
When the extension is ready, it will appear in the extensions manager .
Now what we have to do is activate it. As the extension manager indicates, we will have to go to the Tools> Options> LibreOffice> View section , and we will change the style of the icons and the size of both the icons and the suite toolbar.
We already have the Office icons in LibreOffice, although with the old interface instead of the current Ribbon.
Now we only have to activate the Ribbon-style interface (notebook bar) to make it as similar to Office as possible.
Enable Notebook Bar to mimic Microsoft interface
The first thing we are going to do is enable the use of the experimental LibreOffice functions. To do this, we will open the options menu as we have explained before, and we will go to the “LibreOffice> Advanced” section. Here we will have to activate the experimental functions box to make sure we have the latest implementation of Notebook Bar available.
The next step will be to enable this new interface. To do this, what we have to do is open one of the programs in this suite, such as Writer, and go to the menu View> User interface to enable the new LibreOffice tab view.
We can choose the normal tab view or the compact tab view (smaller). The important thing is that, in the end, LibreOffice looks like the following.
Obviously there are very obvious differences between this appearance and that of Office, starting with the color of the main window. But what we are going to be able to see is that most of the menus are similar, so it is surely much more comfortable for us to use this new interface before the previous one. And the icons, for those who don’t like the ones included in The Document Foundation, are much more faithful to those of Microsoft.
If we do not like these icons and continue to prefer the original icons, or any of the many icon packs found on the net, we can do it the same way. We must download the theme extension that we like the most, install it from the extension manager and enable it from the options.
