ONLYOFFICE Docs: A solid and open source alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs 📍

Tired of editing a text document, spreadsheet, or email presentation with your colleagues? If you open a file, make changes, save the file, and send it back to other co-authors, they can approve the new version of the file, and get the file with new changes endlessly. Don’t think you’re going in circles?

Fortunately, if you want to break out of this vicious circle, there are collaboration tools that allow you to edit documents simultaneously with other users in real-time. No, we’re not talking about Google Docs, but an open source office suite that can help you increase your productivity and save time for other tasks: ONLYOFFICE Docs.

What is ONLYOFFICE Docs?

ONLYOFFICE Docs Very similar to Google Docs and Microsoft Office Online. This open source office suite makes it easy when you need to edit a document together with others. It allows you to share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms online and edit them in your browser. Multiple users can change the same file in real-time without disturbing each other.

Along with its web editors for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms, ONLYOFFICE Docs comes with a PDF viewer and converter. You can’t edit PDF files, but navigation is more convenient, and you can convert your files for editing.

ONLYOFFICE documentation is distributed under the terms of the AGPLv3, so you can use and modify the Office suite freely (as long as you don’t violate the license). The software may or may not be installed on a local server Used in private cloud. An event can handle dozens of users, so it’s a good choice for groups of all sizes and individuals.

ONLYOFFICE docs interface

At first glance, ONLYOFFICE Docs looks like a Microsoft Office clone, but this impression is misleading. The software offers its own look with unique features.

All editing and collaboration tools and buttons are divided into functional tabs. For example, if you need to add something, be it an image or a chart, you can find the corresponding option in the Insert tab. Everything is so intuitive that you don’t have to spend a lot of time getting to grips with the basic features.

The software offers you several interface themes: light, classic light, dark and dark contrast, so you can choose one of them according to your preferences and the current lighting intensity.

If you have experience using other editing software with a tabbed interface, you may find Single Docs more intuitive to use.

Editing features and tools

In ONLYOFFICE Docs, you will find the same editing tools as in any other office suite. So you can create all kinds of fillable forms like text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and reports, essays, invoices, research papers, letters and more.

You can choose from different fonts, insert headers and footers, add objects (tables, graphs, images, graphics, text art, AutoShapes, etc.), apply transitions and animation effects to slides, insert interactive fields on forms, and more.

ONLYOFFICE Docs is compatible with third-party plugins that bring new features (you can manage all installed plugins and add new ones in plugin manager). For example, you can install the Draw.io plugin to access more advanced shapes and drawings, launch the Google Translate or Deepl plugins to translate your text into other languages, and connect your Telegram account to send SMS to your colleagues. Friends while editing a document. Enabling audio and video calls is possible with Rainbow and Jitsi plugins.

ONLYOFFICE is compatible with the formats you want

If you’ve used various office software like Pages or Word, you probably know how terrible it can be to deal with formatting inconsistencies. For example, when creating a text document with pages that look different in Microsoft Office.

As for ONLYOFFICE Docs, you can open any OOXML files (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) without problems and save them in other formats. By converting to OOXML you can work with other popular file extensions such as supported ODF formats. DOC, XLS, PPT, TXT, RTF and HTML can also be edited.

Real-time collaboration

As an alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office Online, ONLYOFFICE Docs Comes with collaboration features that make it easy to co-author documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms in real-time.

You have two different parallel editing modes (which you can turn on and off at any time). When working in quick mode, you can see in real time all the changes made by other users immediately after typing. When you switch to strict mode, all changes will be visible only after clicking the Save button. This model is designed for a private affiliate version.

The app allows different access permissions. You can decide whether other users can freely edit the shared file, open it to view, review and suggest corrections, leave comments or fill in required fields.

The version history feature allows you to browse all previous versions of a file and restore the required version if needed. You can leave comments, send messages or communicate via the Telegram plugin in the built-in chat.

Next-generation integration and applications everywhere

In theory, ONLYOFFICE Docs can be integrated into any web application. Currently, ONLYOFFICE Docs offers more than 30 integration apps for software like Nextcloud, ownCloud, WordPress, Plone, Strapi, Seafile, Alfresco, Jira, Confluence, Nuxeo, Seafile, Chamilo, SharePoint, Moodle. L

ONLYOFFICE Docs is available on all popular platforms, natively on Windows, macOS and Linux. There are also mobile apps (ad-free and free) for Android and iOS that can be downloaded from the official app stores.

Safety first

As a self-hosted solution, ONLYOFFICE Docs gives you full control over your data. Again, the source code of the solution is open and the software uses JSON Web Token to protect documents from unauthorized access.

Enabling the HTTPS protocol allows you to encrypt your traffic. You can also control options for copying, downloading and printing documents. If you’re working with confidential documents, you’ll have a secure place to store, edit, and share documents encrypted using the unbreakable AES-256 algorithm.

You don’t need to find, send or enter passwords: when sharing your documents with other users, you have the freedom to create and modify them in encrypted form.

A free version and an enterprise version

ONLYOFFICE Docs A solid, open source alternative to Microsoft Office or Google Docs. The software comes with a free version but is limited in terms of simultaneous connections. You can consider ONLYOFFICE Docs Enterprise Edition to get regular updates and professional support. This version is scalable, so you can choose the pricing plan that best suits your needs.

All commercial versions of ONLYOFFICE Docs come with a free trial period. This allows you to test the package’s features and see how it works with other platforms before purchasing a commercial license.

👉 Tired of Google Docs or Office? I am downloading ONLYOFFICE docs