Repo Review: OnlyOffice Desktop Editors

I am a fan of LibreOffice and have relied on it at home since its initial release in 2011. However, we know that Microsoft Office predominates in most organizations and that office tasks are handled by the triumvirate of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

LibreOffice’s compatibility with Office Open XML file format (informally known as OOXML) has greatly improved over the years, but sometimes I must deal with an MS Office file that stymies LibreOffice. The formatting might have gone awry — with paragraphs aligned incorrectly, page breaks in odd places, etc. When this happens, there is an open-source program that can help: OnlyOffice Desktop Editors. OnlyOffice is fully compatible with OOXML formats — .docx, .xlsx, .pptx — and can (usually) render these files “natively,” i.e., identically to Microsoft Office.

OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is the offline version of OnlyOffice Docs, a cloud-based office suite created by Ascensio System SIA. Although most of Ascensio’s products are targeted at business customers, the Desktop Editors app is geared to home users.

OnlyOffice Desktop includes a document, spreadsheet, and presentation editor bundled into a single application. It does not require an Internet connection to work; however, if you connect to a cloud portal — such as OnlyOffice’s free portal — the desktop program supports collaborative editing features. OnlyOffice Desktop is offered free of cost for personal use.

History

The company was founded in Russia by Lev Bannov (2009); its product was initially called TeamLab. TeamLab began as a program for internal team collaboration. Following a positive reception, the program’s functionality was enhanced, and the company made efforts to expand its market. In July 2014, TeamLab Office was officially rebranded to “OnlyOffice” and the product’s source code was published on GitHub under the terms of the GNU AGPL (Affero General Public License).

Installation

OnlyOffice Desktop is cross-platform; it is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. For Linux, there are .deb and .rpm packages available, as well as an AppImage and Flatpak.

OnlyOffice is available in the PCLinuxOS repositories (ver. 8.2.2.22, with the package name “onlyoffice-desktopeditors”) and may be installed via Synaptic. During my tests, I used the package from the repository on my KDE Darkstar system and the AppImage on my Xfce machine. Both versions ran fine, and I did not notice any differences in performance between them.

Program Strengths

By combining editors similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, OnlyOffice Desktop provides most of the functionality needed for daily office tasks. The interface closely resembles the MS Office ribbon interface, and the tabbed toolbars are uniform across all three editors:

The screenshot above shows three different documents open in the app: a résumé template; a PowerPoint template; and a spreadsheet. I liked being able to have a document and spreadsheet open next to each other, making it easy to toggle between the files.

Users already familiar with MS Office will immediately feel at home. A gentler learning curve means that they can become productive more quickly. (You might notice that the editors’ ribbons use the same color scheme as their Microsoft counterparts: blue for documents [Word]; green for spreadsheets [Excel]; orange for presentations [PowerPoint].)

In addition to the appealing interface, OnlyOffice Desktop has excellent compatibility with Microsoft’s OOXML file format. The app’s native file format is OOXML; therefore it uses .docx, .xlsx and .pptx as the default. (If you wish, you can save in other file formats: .odt, .rtf, .txt, .pdf, .html, .epub [for documents]; .ods, .csv [for spreadsheets]; .odp [for presentations]).

I experimented with opening a variety of MS Office-generated files: document templates from Microsoft’s Create gallery; spreadsheets from data.gov (a fascinating portal that provides access to open datasets from over 100 US Government agencies); as well as Word documents and PowerPoint presentations from my pre-retirement job. I did not experience any problems; all three editors were able to faithfully reproduce the Office-formatted documents.

To enhance document compatibility, I recommend that you install the Microsoft core fonts on your system (Arial, Times New Roman, etc. via the “webcore-fonts” package in PCLinuxOS) as well as Calibri, Cambria and the new Aptos fonts (which can be downloaded from here). This reduces the chance of minor differences when exchanging documents.

Files can be password-protected with AES 256-bit encryption if you have security concerns. You can also add a digital signature to a file.

The editors’ capabilities can be extended with an assortment of plugins, such as the AI helper, LanguageTool (spelling/grammar checker), DeepL (language translator) and OCR (recognize text from pictures and screenshots).

The PDF Form [Creator] is an interesting component of the program. It enables you to create customizable forms to use for orders, invoices, applications, and the like. The video tutorial by Adrian Reddix walks through the steps of creating a fillable PDF. (I did not know until now that LibreOffice has a similar feature.)

The ability to collaborate is one of OnlyOffice’s promotional points. I registered for the free version/account of OnlyOffice DocSpace which provides 2 GB of storage space. For real-time collaboration, your document must be hosted on a cloud service connected to the editor(s). The “room”-based concept of OnlyOffice DocSpace is its unique feature. You invite other people to your rooms and collaborate with them. In the screenshot below, you can see that my invited collaborator not only left a comment but also modified the document’s text (because I had given him Editing privileges).

OnlyOffice can integrate with Nextcloud, acting as a self-hosted alternative to Google Drive; commercial licenses are available for users who need support or proprietary features. Instead of Nextcloud, you can also connect with ownCloud, Seafile, Moodle, kDrive or Liferay.

Program Weaknesses

I read some reports that OnlyOffice Desktop has difficulty importing .csv files (although I did not encounter this in my testing). Somewhat ironically, OnlyOffice has less compatibility with Open Document Format (.odt, .ods, .odp) than might be expected from an open-source program. I did not have any trouble opening my straightforward LibreOffice Writer files (.ods) but YouTuber Thomas Murosky (Switched to Linux) demonstrated that highly styled LO Writer documents are not rendered 100% accurately in OnlyOffice.

If your Excel usage relies heavily on macros, OnlyOffice Desktop may not be your best option. That is not OnlyOffice’s fault, as none of the competing office suites are compatible in regard to macros. LibreOffice and Microsoft Office use incompatible dialects of BASIC, while OnlyOffice uses a macro language based on JavaScript.

Additional Resources

Reddix, Adrian. Tech Dad Journey. “How to Create a Fillable PDF Using OnlyOffice Form.” YouTube, 22 Apr. 2022. (12 min., 3 sec.)

Reddix, Adrian. Tech Dad Journey. “I Used This Microsoft Office Alternative at Work and No One Noticed.” YouTube, 14 Jan. 2022. (9 min., 24 sec.)

Conclusion

LibreOffice will continue to be my “daily driver” office suite. However, it was interesting to explore OnlyOffice Desktop Editors and I plan to keep it installed on my computer for compatibility reasons (because I use Microsoft 365 only as a last resort). I wrote this article with OnlyOffice Desktop; it was a pleasant experience.

OnlyOffice Desktop is a viable option if you prefer a program with an MS Office-like interface and behavior, if you need to exchange documents with Office users, or maybe if you have a child (or grandchild) who is required to submit school assignments in MS Office format, and you want to be reasonably sure that the formatting will be correct.