Opening a document in LibreOffice can be achieved in several different ways.

This is because LibreOffice has placed and Open item or icon in several different places, and there is a keyboard shortcut for it as well.

The places there are icons or items are:

• File menu in StartCenter and the six applications.
• Standard toolbar
• Recent Files area in StartCenter.
• Open icon in StartCenter.

Pressing Ctrl+O on the keyboard of a computer running Windows or a Linux distro also opens the Open dialog. For Mac users, the key combination is Cmd+O.

File menu

This menu has mostly the same items in the six applications and StartCenter. One of those items is an Open item.

Clicking it opens a dialog that lets you search your hard drive for the desired document. The dialog is based on your operating system. Open dialogs differ from operating system to operating system.

1. Click the File menu.
2. Click the Open item.
3. In the dialog, click on desired folder icons to find the desired document.
4. Double-click the desired document, or click the document, then click the OK button.

The new document will now be open.

Recent Documents

1. Click the File menu.
2. Highlight the Recent Documents sub-menu.
3. Click the desired document to open it.

Standard toolbar
The icon in the toolbar is the second one from the left. It has an associated drop-down menu that gives you the same list of Recent Documents that is in the Recent Documents sub-menu in the File menu.

The icon opens the same dialog that was covered in the File menu section.

Clicking the arrow associated with the list of recently opened documents, reveals the list. Click the desired document.

This Recent Document list is different than the one in the File menu. It has items for Open Template and Open Remote File.
Both open associated dialogs.

StartCenter
Besides the File menu, the StartCenter lists recent documents in the main part of the dialog. This appears when the Recent Files icon in the left column is clicked.

The Open icon, in the left column, opens your operating system’s Open dialog.