LibreOffice learns to speak Markdown in version 26.2
(2026/03/09)
- Reference: 1773065948
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/09/markdown_in_libreoffice/
- Source link:
Markdown has been around for more than 20 years, but native support in LibreOffice might suddenly help to make it viable for more people.
In a world of ever-increasing software complexity, Markdown is a welcome change. It's dead simple and it can't do very much – but that's its virtue. Markdown is a document markup format you can just read (please, try to contain your excitement). It has two key advantages. One is that it's so simple that you can write in any old plain text editor. The second is that it's designed to be readable and make sense to humans as well as computers, even if they don't know they're reading Markdown.
It's the default format of several distraction-free writing tools such as [1]I Write Like – the authors of which [2]seem very pleased that LibreOffice 26.2 can natively import and export Markdown.
[3]
This is welcome, even if it isn't radical. Lots of web-facing tools can take a Markdown file and turn it into a functional web page. For instance, write your project's README file in Markdown, upload it to GitHub, and suddenly it magically looks nice, without you needing to do any web publishing or formatting at all. However, the plain Markdown text remains readable without any processing at all.
[4]
[5]
The Markdown format was introduced in a [6]Daring Fireball blog post back in 2004, co-developed by John Gruber and [7]the late Aaron Swartz . These days, countless tools for creating and managing software, webpages, emails, and more understand Markdown, and there are dozens of [8]guides and [9]cheat sheets [PDF] to help you learn it, including getting a [10]live preview .
As of February, though, there's a significant new addition to the arsenal: [11]LibreOffice 26.2 handles it . LibreOffice Writer can open documents in almost any word processor file format, and save back into almost any other. As of late last month, this includes Markdown. Specifically, [12]LibreOffice 26.2 supports the version called [13]CommonMark .
Markdown is so simple that there are a few different variants and extensions, such as [14]GitHub Flavored Markdown . Plus, different Markdown rendering tools can give slightly different results – as the [15]Babelmark project explains .
Markdown's simplicity makes it easy to learn. That can be seen as a weakness. People pick it up quickly, which emboldens them to use it for things for which it's not ideal. It's great for throwing together a simple webpage, but less ideal for writing an entire multi-section manual.
This has led to extended forms of Markdown, such as [16]MultiMarkdown . There are other lightweight markup languages that aim to remain as readable but do more, such as [17]Markless , [18]AsciiDoc , and [19]reStructuredText .
[20]Document Foundation urges EU to ditch Excel lock-in for cybersecurity law consultation
[21]Office EU waves sovereignty flag with a familiar stack under the bonnet
[22]LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic, dusted off for another go
[23]You don't need Linux to run free and open source software
As we have [24]said before , even if you're perfectly happy with MS Office, it's worth having LibreOffice installed just in case. In this vulture's fairly extensive experience, it's a lot better at opening corrupted Office files than Office itself. You can try to open a damaged file that crashes the Microsoft apps, and there's a good chance that LibreOffice will open it, even if with some warnings, and let you recover some or all of your data and save it in a fresh, undamaged file. This can be a life-saver – or at least an employment-saver – in a crisis. Now the latest [25]LibreOffice 26.2.1 can also turn a Word document into clean simple Markdown – or turn Markdown into a clean, formatted Word document – in just a couple of clicks.
There already were tools to do this, of course. [26]Pandoc is superb for this kind of thing, and runs on all the major OSes. It's probably the single most useful (or at least most used) Haskell program ever written. This is one of the handy features of The Reg FOSS desk's [27]preferred writing tool, Panwriter . But Pandoc is a command-line app, while LibreOffice is very easy, point and click, and shows you how the results look.
[28]
Plus, as the [29]LibreOffice blog claimed recently, it offers more UI versatility than Microsoft Office, or free rivals such as [30]OnlyOffice and WPS Office . Like Microsoft 362.5, WPS and OnlyOffice sport Microsoft-style ribbon interfaces – and nothing else. Uniquely, LibreOffice offers the choice: ribbon, or menus and a unified toolbar, or menus and multiple toolbars. ®
Get our [31]Tech Resources
[1] https://iwl.me/
[2] https://blog.iwl.me/2026/03/08/libreoffice-markdown/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/13/anger_death_aaron_swartz/
[8] https://www.markdownguide.org/
[9] https://indico.bnl.gov/event/22647/attachments/53164/90897/Markdown%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf
[10] https://markdownlivepreview.com/
[11] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/04/libreoffice-26-2-is-here/
[12] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/markdown.html
[13] https://commonmark.org/
[14] https://github.github.com/gfm/
[15] https://babelmark.github.io/faq/
[16] https://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/
[17] https://shirakumo.org/docs/markless/
[18] https://asciidoc.org/
[19] https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/index.html
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/document_foundation_excel/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/office_eu_suite/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/libreoffice_online_deatticized/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/25/go_foss_keep_your_os/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/23/libreoffice_24_8/
[25] https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice
[26] https://pandoc.org/
[27] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/panwriter/
[28] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[29] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/27/odf-is-just-the-first-of-lo-advantages/
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/21/onlyoffice_7_3_and_wps_11/
[31] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
In a world of ever-increasing software complexity, Markdown is a welcome change. It's dead simple and it can't do very much – but that's its virtue. Markdown is a document markup format you can just read (please, try to contain your excitement). It has two key advantages. One is that it's so simple that you can write in any old plain text editor. The second is that it's designed to be readable and make sense to humans as well as computers, even if they don't know they're reading Markdown.
It's the default format of several distraction-free writing tools such as [1]I Write Like – the authors of which [2]seem very pleased that LibreOffice 26.2 can natively import and export Markdown.
[3]
This is welcome, even if it isn't radical. Lots of web-facing tools can take a Markdown file and turn it into a functional web page. For instance, write your project's README file in Markdown, upload it to GitHub, and suddenly it magically looks nice, without you needing to do any web publishing or formatting at all. However, the plain Markdown text remains readable without any processing at all.
[4]
[5]
The Markdown format was introduced in a [6]Daring Fireball blog post back in 2004, co-developed by John Gruber and [7]the late Aaron Swartz . These days, countless tools for creating and managing software, webpages, emails, and more understand Markdown, and there are dozens of [8]guides and [9]cheat sheets [PDF] to help you learn it, including getting a [10]live preview .
As of February, though, there's a significant new addition to the arsenal: [11]LibreOffice 26.2 handles it . LibreOffice Writer can open documents in almost any word processor file format, and save back into almost any other. As of late last month, this includes Markdown. Specifically, [12]LibreOffice 26.2 supports the version called [13]CommonMark .
Markdown is so simple that there are a few different variants and extensions, such as [14]GitHub Flavored Markdown . Plus, different Markdown rendering tools can give slightly different results – as the [15]Babelmark project explains .
Markdown's simplicity makes it easy to learn. That can be seen as a weakness. People pick it up quickly, which emboldens them to use it for things for which it's not ideal. It's great for throwing together a simple webpage, but less ideal for writing an entire multi-section manual.
This has led to extended forms of Markdown, such as [16]MultiMarkdown . There are other lightweight markup languages that aim to remain as readable but do more, such as [17]Markless , [18]AsciiDoc , and [19]reStructuredText .
[20]Document Foundation urges EU to ditch Excel lock-in for cybersecurity law consultation
[21]Office EU waves sovereignty flag with a familiar stack under the bonnet
[22]LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic, dusted off for another go
[23]You don't need Linux to run free and open source software
As we have [24]said before , even if you're perfectly happy with MS Office, it's worth having LibreOffice installed just in case. In this vulture's fairly extensive experience, it's a lot better at opening corrupted Office files than Office itself. You can try to open a damaged file that crashes the Microsoft apps, and there's a good chance that LibreOffice will open it, even if with some warnings, and let you recover some or all of your data and save it in a fresh, undamaged file. This can be a life-saver – or at least an employment-saver – in a crisis. Now the latest [25]LibreOffice 26.2.1 can also turn a Word document into clean simple Markdown – or turn Markdown into a clean, formatted Word document – in just a couple of clicks.
There already were tools to do this, of course. [26]Pandoc is superb for this kind of thing, and runs on all the major OSes. It's probably the single most useful (or at least most used) Haskell program ever written. This is one of the handy features of The Reg FOSS desk's [27]preferred writing tool, Panwriter . But Pandoc is a command-line app, while LibreOffice is very easy, point and click, and shows you how the results look.
[28]
Plus, as the [29]LibreOffice blog claimed recently, it offers more UI versatility than Microsoft Office, or free rivals such as [30]OnlyOffice and WPS Office . Like Microsoft 362.5, WPS and OnlyOffice sport Microsoft-style ribbon interfaces – and nothing else. Uniquely, LibreOffice offers the choice: ribbon, or menus and a unified toolbar, or menus and multiple toolbars. ®
Get our [31]Tech Resources
[1] https://iwl.me/
[2] https://blog.iwl.me/2026/03/08/libreoffice-markdown/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/13/anger_death_aaron_swartz/
[8] https://www.markdownguide.org/
[9] https://indico.bnl.gov/event/22647/attachments/53164/90897/Markdown%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf
[10] https://markdownlivepreview.com/
[11] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/04/libreoffice-26-2-is-here/
[12] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/markdown.html
[13] https://commonmark.org/
[14] https://github.github.com/gfm/
[15] https://babelmark.github.io/faq/
[16] https://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/
[17] https://shirakumo.org/docs/markless/
[18] https://asciidoc.org/
[19] https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/index.html
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/document_foundation_excel/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/office_eu_suite/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/libreoffice_online_deatticized/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/25/go_foss_keep_your_os/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/23/libreoffice_24_8/
[25] https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice
[26] https://pandoc.org/
[27] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/panwriter/
[28] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aa78teTHFvNLk1ml-VDtgQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[29] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/27/odf-is-just-the-first-of-lo-advantages/
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/21/onlyoffice_7_3_and_wps_11/
[31] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: no asciidoc?
Androgynous Cupboard
Yep. Core Markdown is pretty limited, so to do more (eg tables) you wind up in one of several slightly incompatible dialects.
ASCIIDoc is definitely where it's at, and I can say that with confidence having written a few hundred pages of documentation. It's also the input to [1]https://www.metanorma.org , which means ASCIIDoc is now being used to create ISO specifications too (fun fact: the ISO process requires specifications are submitted in MS word for review - so Metanorma can convert from ASCIIDoc to MS Word).
[1] https://www.metanorma.org
Re: no asciidoc?
Throatwarbler Mangrove
. . . result: you now have 28 competing standards.
Indeed nice addition!
Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Several Wiki, like dokuwiki, use markdown too.
extend ...
Paul Herber
I really, really think the encrypted binary blob feature should be added before the usual suspect gets in there first.
Learning
elsergiovolador
I wish it could learn speak MS Office. Probably only reason why it is not widely used.
JLV
Markdown’s other big advantage is lack of choice. You can’t spend hours tweaking the styling to get it “just right” to best get your message across or “optimize corporate branding”.
You have to either spend that time improving the content itself. Or, even better, moving on to your next real-world task.
volsano
Or you can install Typst - the young upstart challenger to TeX / LaTeX.
It's sort of LaTeX on steroids with a built-in scripting language. It's native format is Markdown with bells on.
And .... You can happily spend hours tweaking Typst packages to get exactly the weird presentation that will placate your marketing droids. Their help forums are filled with people trying to torture a typesetting app. You can do the same with LaTeX too - but it may just be a little easier with a modern language like Typst.
I use it with Joplin
Paratrooping Parrot
I use it with the LaTeX Maths functions in Joplin and it can make nice notes.
no asciidoc?
Markdown is pretty poor by comparison.