OnlyOffice ticks a lot of boxes and is built for collaboration and teamwork. If you’re looking for a powerful Microsoft Office alternative for your business, this may be it. Read through our OnlyOffice review to see why we were so impressed with this cloud and server-based office suite. Unlike other office suites, OnlyOffice is a cloud-based with a simple offline App. Think of it as a competitor to online versions of MS Office. There are multiple parts to Onlyoffice. There is a server addition and ONLYOFFICE Community Edition. the community edition is a free version and that is what we will be discussing in this section.
The main landing page presents you with your folders and documents, collaborative folders and tools, and cloud accounts, all with a sleek design. One of the biggest issues with ONLYOFFICE on Ubuntu is the integration with the desktop Theme. By that I mean it does not integrate well with the theme and you will have to manage that within the application itself.
Like many suites, OnlyOffice will look very familiar to those who have experience with Microsoft Office. You can easily edit text and add elements with the ribbon at the top, while a sidebar supports more advanced features like editing embedded chart data and customizing tables.
The interface is well-organized, and the HTML5 web app is impressively responsive: it really felt like using an on-disk program. The only notable limit we found regarded trackpad zooming: it doesn’t work in Safari and is overly sensitive and slow to respond in Chrome.
Some plans (see below) enable businesses to customize the appearance, interface, and function of the software at a deep level.
ONLYOFFICE: Features
Before diving in, we’d like to note that OnlyOffice supports the addition of premade and homemade plugins, which means that if a feature doesn’t exist, you can create it yourself. It’s compatible with all Office and OpenDocument filetypes.
Documents
OnlyOffice supports some of the richest text formatting we’ve seen, in addition to style creation and customization. Page layout options are comprehensive, with margins, custom page sizes, and even personalized watermarks. Columns are supported, but must all be the same size.
Lists creation is exemplary: hyphens and asterisks result in new lists; a huge range of icons is available; indents cycle through list styles; multilevel lists are supported and customizable; and formatting changes carry through list levels.
A references tab supports automatic Table of Contents creation and customizable footnotes. While OnlyOffice lacks any kind of citation manager, an EasyBib plugin exists, so subscribers can enjoy full integration. Find & Replace supports Replace All, but not finding styles.
Spreadsheets
Our opinion of the Spreadsheets app was mixed. On the one hand, it’s certainly powerful: there are lots of built-in formulas, plus support for filtering, Text to Columns, and pivot tables. Cell formatting is rich, with a customizable number, dates, and currency formats. Finally, charts and graphs are easy to create from data and customize.
On the other hand, we found formula input limited. Suggestions appear as you type, but descriptions are available only on hover, and they disappear once the formula is selected. Similarly, argument hints could be clearer or provide examples. Next, error parsing fails to indicate specific problem elements, making it hard to tell what’s gone wrong. Finally, #NAME and #VALUE errors give no information when selected, and error tracking is unsupported.
Presentations
Presentations are straightforward and easy to use. Adding slides and elements and choosing highly customizable transitions worked intuitively, as did presenter mode. We did notice that it’s impossible to record the timing of a rehearsed slideshow, a feature that MS Office supports.
If you would like to try ONLYOFFICE please head to our install guides section for install instructions.
