OnlyOffice is a business-class productiveness platform designed for inner group collaboration. Whereas most of its merchandise are focused at small and enterprise companies, it additionally gives a Microsoft Workplace various for dwelling use. It’s distinctive in that it consists of doc, spreadsheet, and presentation editors in a single desktop app. It really works with hottest file codecs together with DOCX, ODT, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPTX, and ODP, and is free to make use of on Home windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
This evaluate is a part of our roundup of finest Microsoft Workplace alternate options. Go there for particulars on competing merchandise and shopping for recommendation.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGThe acquainted Workplace-style interface makes it simple to get began working.
Fingers on
Like most Workplace alternate options, OnlyOffice hews to the Microsoft ribbon interface. The tabbed toolbars are uniform throughout all three editors. House is the place you’ll discover enhancing and formatting instruments; Insert lets you add pictures, shapes, and different components to your doc/spreadsheet/presentation; Structure instruments controls web page margins, orientation, and dimension; and so forth. Every editor additionally consists of software tabs particular to its doc kind—the doc editor’s References toolbar consists of choices for including a desk of contents, footnotes, hyperlinks, and picture captions, whereas the spreadsheet editor has tabs devoted to formulation, information, and pivot tables.
All three editors embrace Collaboration and Safety as top-level navigation objects. The primary enables you to monitor enhancing modifications and add and evaluate feedback when linked to a cloud answer. With the second, you’ll be able to add your signature to a doc or encrypt the file with a password. A number of plugins are included to increase the performance of every editor, as effectively. You may embed a YouTube video into your doc or presentation, translate textual content into a number of languages, electronic mail recordsdata instantly from the editor, and extra.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGOnlyOffice faithfully codecs all Microsoft Workplace file varieties.
Working with paperwork is exceedingly simple. Every file opens in its personal tab, just like an internet browser; and since OnlyOffice is a standalone app containing three editors relatively than three discrete apps, you’ll be able to have a doc and spreadsheet open subsequent to one another, for instance, and simply toggle between them. The editors use the identical shade coding as Microsoft Phrase, Excel, and PowerPoint—blue for paperwork, inexperienced for spreadsheets, and purple for shows—so you’ll be able to know at a look what kind of recordsdata you will have open. All three editors have been in a position to faithfully reproduce Workplace-formatted paperwork in my testing.
OnlyOffice helps a number of cloud options to allow real-time collaboration. OnlyOffice’s proprietary cloud would appear your best option for many customers, however when you already use Nextcloud, ownCloud, or Seafile, you’ll be able to join with these as effectively. Along with co-editing and commenting on paperwork, connecting the desktop editor to one in every of these cloud providers additionally permits consumer to work together utilizing chat.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGYou may work on paperwork, spreadsheets, and shows facet by facet.
Standout options
- Glorious Microsoft Workplace compatibility
- Acquainted, Microsoft-like interface
- Three editors included in a single app
Lacking options
- Cellular apps
OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is finest for:
Customers who just like the customizability that an open-source product affords will discover loads to love in OnlyOffice. You may prolong OnlyOffice with a variety of current plugins for standard apps similar to Field, DocuSign, WordPress, and masses extra. If you happen to don’t discover what you’re searching for within the huge app listing, you’ll be able to create your personal plugin utilizing OnlyOffice’s API. Anybody nerdish about productiveness ought to discover the OnlyOffice interesting, too, because it actually saves on desktop area and CPU utilization to work on all of your paperwork in a single app.