Software Update: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8

Version 4.1.8 of OpenOffice has been released. This open source office suite started in 1984 as StarOffice. In 1999 it came into the hands of Sun Microsystems and then in 2010 it ended up with Oracle. After a number of developers switched to LibreOffice out of dissatisfaction with how Oracle managed this project, the source code was eventually donated to the Apache Software Foundation. OpenOffice comes with a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet program (Calc), a presentation program (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), a database program (Base) and a program for creating scientific notations (Formula). The release notes for version 4.1.8 look like this:

New possibilities

No new features are included in this release

Improvements

• The OpenOffice SDK can now be built with Java 8
• Various problems solved
• Dictionaries updated

Security

• CVE-2020-13958 Apache OpenOffice – Unlimited actions lead to arbitrary code execution in created documents

Significant Improvements

• Unable to insert .dib images into documents
• Unable to connect to MediaWiki in Options dialog
• Word Count Dialog: Last digit on the right truncated
• PDF Export crashes for fonts Source Han Sans / Noto CJK
• Fix for “The password is not correct. The file cannot be opened.”
• Updated Fonts DejaVu
• Replace Quicktime with MacAVF
• Problem with “Solver” dialog box layout
• AOO Writer – spell check bug

For a full list of all resolved issues, view the list in Bugzilla

Updated dictionaries

• Asturian (ast) *
• Danish (da) *
• English (en-GB)
• Lithuanian (lt) *

* When you update your installation of AOO you may come across old dictionaries. Make sure to remove it.

For a full list of available languages ​​and language packs, click here.

Known issues for macOS users

• Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8 could be flagged by the Gatekeeper capability in Mac OS X. This is a new capability to help protect against malware on Mac systems.
  • For OS X through 10.11 “El Capitan”: A procedure is explained at the following link to allow applications not installed from the Mac App store to run. look at it article from Mac support.
  • For macOS X 10.12 “Sierra” and later: In Finder, Control-click or right-click the app icon. Select Open from the top context menu that appears. Click Open in the box of the dialog box. If prompted, enter the administrator’s name and password. This is only necessary when you start Apache OpenOffice for the first time.
• Due to a known issue in installations of Oracle Java from Apache OpenOffice on macOS that do not have the obsolete Apple Java 6 installed, making them unable to recognize Oracle Java 7 and 8. If it is not possible to update to Java 9, install the legacy version of Apple Java from the following link: Legacy Apple Java 6. This allows those parts of AOO that need Java to run correctly.

Known issues for Windows users

• Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8 supports Java 8 (32-bit), which is the recommended configuration, but (especially on 64-bit Windows) you might get warnings that the version of Java might be broken. In that case, download and install it Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package.