Is this the BEST OFFICE SUITE for Linux?

When you're talking about Linux, everyone is quick to point out that Linux doesn't have Microsoft Office. It's a big part of the Linux desktop's app gap, but there are some solutions there. Most of you probably know of LibreOffice, which is an amazing open source project, but there is another solution, which is suitable for individuals, and professionals alike, and might just be the best choice out there for Linux, and it's called Only Office.

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## What is OnlyOffice

Onlyoffice is an open source office suite, developed by Ascensio System, a company based in Riga, in Latvia.

It's not just your basic word processor, spreadsheet and presentation modules, though. These are of course available online or offline, but you also get access to a complete CRM, a projects management module, a webmail and calendar, and a internal social network.

## How do you get it ?

There are multiple ways to get access to OnlyOffice. You can download their desktop editor, which will serve as your office suite, installed on your computer. They provide it in AppImage form, which ensures that any distro will be able to make use of it. The file itself is pretty light, less than 250 Mb. You can also get a deb, and RPM, a Snap, or a flatpak, so bascially whatever distro you're using, you can get access to it.

The desktop editors only include the word processor, the spreadsheet, and the presentation module. If you want access to the whole suite, you can go with the cloud service, or self host your own OnlyOffice.

The cloud service or the self hosted version aren't free though, and will currently set you back at least 66€ per year for one user, which is in the ballpark of a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, although with less cloud storage, 20Gb instead of 1Tb, and less tools, since you don't get an equivalent to OneNote, Publisher, or Access.

## What can it do ?

OnlyOffice is a very capable office suite. First, the basic modules are highly compatible with Microsoft Office documents. Compared to other options, like LibreOffice, or GOogle docs, it just handles any type of document like a champ.

OnlyOffice can also open and edit Microsoft Office autoshapes, instead of just displaying them like basic images, and inline charts and tables inside of text documents can also be edited directly from the word processor, which is a nice plus. It works with plenty of file formats, including the Open Document Format that LibreOffice uses, so you're not losing access to anything, and it can export to PDF easily.

The interface is ribbon based, like Microsoft Office, so users won't feel too lost there, and you can open multiple documents in a single window thanks to tabs on the title bar. Tabs can be dragged out of the main window if you prefer having individual windows to work with. Be careful though, you need to have the main "Desktop Editor window" opened even if there are no document located in it, which is a bit weird.

The word processor supports everything you'd expect: font and styles, paragraph formatting, margins, page numbering, equations, drop caps, find and replace... It should work for most users here.

The spreadsheet module handles functions, and formulas, sorting and filtering, and obviously allows you to create charts and format them easily. For more advanced users, macros are supported, using Javascript , so no Office Macro support here, but you can recreate them if you can handle a bit of JS.

As per the presentation module, it has a bunch of themes to get you started, handles charts, tables, equations, as well as transitions and animations, including applying those in bulk. It also has a presenter mode with notes, which is a required feature for anyone who regularly gives talks or for students.

On top of these features, onlyoffice supports document versioning, so you can always get back to an older version, you can track changes and compare documents, and accept or reject the various changes, and all these modules support online collaboration, for multi-user editing of a document.

To complete this already excellent roundup, OnlyOffice has android and iOS apps to open and edit your documents on the go, with touch friendly interfaces.

This video is sponsored by skillshare.

[osaid]

Hey i need a raise,


No you don't, go back to work.😂

[bilange]

The only thing keeping me from switching to a MSO alternative is support for VBA Macros, mostly in Excel. I know it's a complicated requirement to implement, but my end users still uses macros (to my disapointment I might add).

[youtubeoneverything]

This is the first positive review I've seen of this office suite. I think I'll give it a go!

[kaalsemulzii]

Only keep it on my system, so that I don't need to worry about firing up my Win 10 virtual machine for MS Office. Other than that, it's neet, but Libre Office is my preferred tool.

[crushfire]

I use WPS office on my popos, 99% compatible with ms office files, even the interface & configuration are exact copy from ms office (with tabbed documents as a plus).

[rengamesitout]

Its the most useful so far, and conserves the .DOCX format out of all the opens ource software. It does still have some problems with large files. I have a 600+ document that I'm working on and it is really slow saving.

[ahmseb]

I really liked OnlyOffice but sadly it doesn't support arabic which is my native language I hope the developers will add the needed support soon mean while I'm already moved all my work to libreoffice and i'm happy with it.
thanks Nick for your awesome videos.

[MaxH]

I also liked very much the compatibility of only office with ms office formats. I could make comments on a word document for my collaborators without a problem.

[moisespina]

Thanks for the recommendation Nick, very useful information! nice video 👍

[jafd]

This is my main Office Suite, very recommended.

[sudipchatterjee]

Other than the fact that it is a web app, I find this fantastic! I'm using it from 2018 as my main office editor and enjoying it very much! It is flawlessly compatible with Microsoft Office. Thanks for this shout-out!

[AzaelMirelesMoreno]

I have been using this alternative on windows 10 for at least 1 year, and is fantastic

[twaks]

This peeked my interest. I installed Only Office, and found that it looks exactly like Microsoft Office. I immediately noticed though that the spreadsheet could not render a complex formula I had in an existing LibreOffice spreadsheet. This is a show-stopper for me, but I will see if this improves in future versions since it is a great looking program.

[vishalkumar]

I recently discovered Zoho Office suite. It has Writer app a good alternative to docs which is also available for Linux with online sync.

[tibert]

OnlyOffice seems very good, but I still use LibreOffice because of one thing : the extension support, it allows me to use LanguageTool for English and Grammalecte for French, 2 open source extensions for LibreOffice with very good spellchecking. And to add more, now LibreOffice 7 is now more compatible with docx format.

[fuseteam]

only office has some formatting issues with odf files in my experience

This comes at the right time! Thanks youtube gods! And linux experiment.

[haji_amzar]

thank you for introducing this amazing software

[Andriej]

I just barely tried it, and I was already impressed how perfectly it opened huge, old WORD document

[IgnoreMyChan]

If this is open source... Why is LibreOffice not adapting their skills to open MS Office documents? This is for me the only reason why I still don't like LibreOffice as much as I would.