Should we upgrade from LibreOffice 3.4.4?

We are running LibreOffice 3.4.4 on a Mac OSX Version 10.7.5 (Intel). We have had this computer since November 2011 and Libreoffice was installed on it when we bought it new. This morning we had a problem with a Restore Windows notice appearing on our desktop. We were finally able to find a solution entitled Software: LibreOffice - Fixing the Restore Windows bug in OSX and this worked. This involved finding "org.libreoffice.script.savedState” and moving it to the Trash Can. I notice that this is a old bug and has been presumably fixed in later versions of LibreOffice. Should we download a later version of LibreOffice? Will we still be able to access all our previously saved files?

The most recent version 4.3.5 is rather matured (far from bug-free, of course) and does offer some new features including better support for “alien” (MS) formats, some new Calc functions, and much more.

It does, on the other hand, no longer support the “deprecated” Star-/Open- Office formats (like sdw, sxw …). The last version to do that was 3.6.7.

However, you won’t stick to “legacy” versions forever, I suppose. Thus you may

  1. get a survey of all your files in old formats

2a) decide to convert all of them some day into OpenDocument formats or

2b) retain a version of the 3.6 level in parallel to newer ones or a PortableLibreOffice 3.x (as I do) for working with the old files and/or converting them if need be.

  1. upgrade the main working version to a 4.3 version (and 4.4. lateron …)

Just from experience.

We are running LibO v4.3.4.1 on Mac PowerBook Pro OS 10,6,8 and I consider to upgrade to 4.3.5.2 as soon as I have a bit of time.

If you have very old files, or you must consider that someone will ask you to open an old file please consider @Lupp 's remarks on Star-/OpenOffice files. I have a the old version as a portable version and normal version saved for the unforeseeable case…

Just as a notice, font rendering/support in versions after 4.0.6 arent as good, but it stopped being supported from Jan 2014.