Category: Office Suite Overview

OnlyOffice a collaboration tool for all users

Posted on by anadmitc in Office Suite Overview, Only Office, word processors

Many Linux users may believe they only have one choice when it comes to an office suite. LibreOffice is the only one they know about. It also is an office suite that those who are new to Linux can try on Windows or Mac before switching.

OnlyOffice is another office suite that works equally on these operating systems. It consists of three application that are common to any office suite: word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation. Like LibreOffice, the applications work offline. They have the features to create and edit professional documents, but they are not as powerful as LibreOffice’s applications.

OnlyOffice also doesn’t work on 32-bit systems or ARM processors, like LibreOffice can.

OnlyOffice is an office suite that works on Windows, Mac OS, and just about every Linux distro. Here version 6.0.2 is shown on Linux Mint 20.

However, OnlyOffice is a much better tool for collaborating with others. Linux users can collaborate with colleagues using Mac or Windows computers through the editors, seeing changes as someone else types them. LibreOffice users can’t work on documents with other LibreOffice users like this.

The reason why is that it is more than a set of applications that can be installed on an operating system. The applications also have versions that can be accessed through the cloud. Individuals and organizations can access them by signing up for OnlyOffice accounts or by installing them on servers they control.

These server applications can be accessed through any Web browser, on any operating system. The online version of OnlyOffice offers more applications than the three that can be installed on desktops. Click here to learn more about OnlyOffice.

The office suite that can be installed on operating systems, known as desktop-editors, can connect to those OnlyOffice accounts. They also can connect to ownCloud and Nextcloud accounts. Users can access documents stored in these accounts and work on them with others inside the desktop editors.

OnlyOffice is only available on computers with Intel or AMD processors, but users can install it on just about any computer built in the past 20 years, with just about any operating systems. It also is available through the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Operating systems

There are multiple versions of the desktop editors. The current version is 6.0.2, and it works on most operating systems. Older versions are also available. Several of them can be downloaded from the desktop-editors download page.

Windows

The page has two downloads. One is for 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. There is also one for older versions of Windows.

Version 6.0.2 is available for Windows 7 and later. For those who still have Windows XP or Vista, OnlyOffice has an up-to-date version of the suite. Version 4.8.7 that was updated in November 2020 is available

Mac OS

Version 6.0.2 is available for 10.11 and later.

Linux

For Linux, there are several different ways to install OnlyOffice. The office suite can be installed on just about Linux distro that is running on a computer with an Intel or AMD processor that is 64-bit.

Snap and Flathub

Most Linux distros have access to the Snap Store or Flathub Store. One or both of them is preinstalled on several of them. It is also easy to install either one by entering a few commands in a Terminal application on distros that don’t come with them.

Ubuntu, Zorin, and several Ubuntu-based operating systems sponsored by Canonical, the organization behind Ubuntu, come with Snap as part of their software centers. Zorin, Linux Mint, and Elementary OS are a few distros with FlatHub preinstalled.

  • Click here to learn how to install Flathub on various operating systems. Most distros not on this list have pages explaining what commands will install Flathub. For example, here it is how to install it on Manjaro.
  • Click here to learn how to install the Snap Store.

The Snap and Flathub stores have the latest version of the desktop editors, currently version 6.0.2. The Snap store also contains version 5.4 that can be installed on servers.

Packages

In addition to these two stores, DEB and RPM packages can be downloaded and installed from the OnlyOffice desktop editor page. There are two versions for DEB, which what Debian and Ubuntu-based systems use. One version is for Debian 8 and Ubuntu 14.04 and later. The other is for Debian 7 and Ubuntu 12.04.

The third package is for CentOS 7 and other systems that use the RPM package manager.

AppImage

OnlyOffice is also offered in the AppImage format. An AppImage is different from the other formats discussed above because it does not need to be installed to be run. There is no need to install a package or install an entire store before installing an application.

Version 5.6.4, an older version of the suite, is available as an AppImage.

Here are the steps for setting up the OnlyOffice AppImage:

  1. Download OnlyOffice by clicking the download for the AppImage on this page.
  2. After it is downloaded, go to the folder where it is stored.
  3. Right-click on the application icon.
  4. Click Properties.
  5. In the window that appears, click the Permissions tab.
  6. In the Permissions tab, click all the Access drop-down menus and select Read and Write in the menus that appear.
  7. Put a check in the Execute checkbox.
  8. Close the window.
  9. Double-click the icon to launch the application.

This is one of the easiest ways to run OnlyOffice. The application works best when it is installed directly on the drive the operating system is installed on. It is more difficult to change the permissions when the application is downloaded to a USB stick or other external drive.

Preinstalled

OnlyOffice comes preinstalled on several different distros:

Conclusion

While OnlyOffice doesn’t have as many features as LibreOffice, one of the most popular cross-platform suites on the market, it does collaboration much better. It gives Linux users, Mac users, and Windows users the capability to collaborate with each other on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Users can’t do this in LibreOffice.

OnlyOffice works offline as well. It is available on just about any operating system that can run on a 64-bit Inter or AMD processor.

Announcement of LibreOffice 7.0

Posted on by anadmitc in LibreOffice, News, Office Suite Overview

Berlin, August 5, 2020

LibreOffice 7.0: the new major release of the best FOSS office suite ever is available on all OSes and platforms, and provides significant new features

The LibreOffice Project announces the availability of LibreOffice 7.0, a new major release providing significant new features: support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.

Support for ODF 1.3. OpenDocument, LibreOffice’s native open and standardised format for office documents, has recently been updated to version 1.3 as an OASIS Technical Committee Specification. The most important new features are digital signatures for documents and OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents, with improvements in areas such as change tracking, and additional details in the description of elements in first pages, text, numbers and charts. The development of ODF 1.3 features has been funded by donations to The Document Foundation.

Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration. The Skia graphics engine has been implemented thanks to sponsorship by AMD, and is now the default on Windows, for faster performance. Skia is an open source 2D graphics library which provides common APIs that work across a variety of hardware and software platforms, and can be used for drawing text, shapes and images. Vulkan is a new-generation graphics and compute API with high-efficiency and cross-platform access to modern GPUs.

Better compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. DOCX now saves in native 2013/2016/2019 mode, instead of 2007 compatibility mode, to improve interoperability with multiple versions of MS Office, based on the same Microsoft approach. Export to XLSX files with sheet names longer than 31 characters is now possible, along with exporting checkboxes in XLSX. The “invalid content error” message was resolved when opening exported XLSX files with shapes. Finally, there were improvements to the PPTX import/export filter.

LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite arena, starting from native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – with better security and interoperability features over proprietary formats – to almost perfect support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In addition, LibreOffice includes filters for many legacy document formats, and as such is the best interoperability tool in the market.

This is a press release from the LibreOffice Website, written by Italo Vignoli. Click here to visit the article on the LibreOffice blog.

LibreOffice, NeoOffice: two great suites for your application toolbox

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, NeoOffice, Office Suite Overview

When OpenOffice was first released it was available for Linux distros and Windows natively, but it ran on Mac under Unix. A company called NeoOffice responded by forking the code into their own distribution for the Mac.

For the past 5 or 6 years LibreOffice and OpenOffice have run natively on Mac, but NeoOffice is still being developed. The suite is being sold through the Mac App Store for $29.99.
It has some different features than it’s other open-source counterparts. These include being able to sync with iCloud and having independent floating windows that are common to a lot of Mac applications.

This article will compare the two office suites.

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Easily make LibreOffice, Office 2016 more worldly by adding languages

Posted on by timcdana in Office for Mac, Office Suite Overview

The desktop computer was an American invention, but four decades after the first ones graced offices and households, they are now in just about every office and home in the world.

This means that people who speak many different languages use one, and most likely use office applications to create documents in a myriad of languages.

This article compares the language support for Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Both office suites support many languages.It also explains how to install language interfaces.

In general, LibreOffice supports 150 languages, while the Windows version of Office 2016 supports 92. The Mac version of Office 2016 supports 58. Support for languages means built in dictionaries and thesauri, as well as the ability to change menus, toolbars, help resources, and dialogs to another language.

Continue reading “Easily make LibreOffice, Office 2016 more worldly by adding languages” →

LibreOffice integrates in ways Microsoft Office doesn’t

Posted on by timcdana in Office Suite Overview

 

The previous article has a link to a Web page that compares LibreOffice to Microsoft Office 2016. One of the items in the Website’s table is “full integration of all office components.” This is a key advantage LibreOffice has over Microsoft Office.

Recent documents LibreOffice Standard toolbar
The Open icon, with Recent drop-down, is available in all six applications.

 

This article covers the ease of opening recent documents, creating new documents, and launching wizards in LibreOffice and compares that to Microsoft Office’s integration. All of these are accessible from the File menu in any one of LibreOffice’s six applications (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math, and Base) and StartCenter.

 

You can access any recently opened document from the File menu in any application.  If you have a document open in Writer and want to open a spreadsheet you worked on yesterday, simply click the File menu, highlight Recent Documents, and then click on the document in the list. Recent documents also can be accessed through the Standard toolbar, that is available to all six applications. Click the arrow next to the open icon to reveal recent documents.

 

 

LibreOffice New sub-menu
This shows the New sub-menu that is in LibreOffice’s StartCenter and all six applications: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base, and Math.

Creating new documents is similar. To create a presentation document while you are working on a Writer document, click the File menu, highlight the New sub-menu, then click spreadsheet in the list. The Standard toolbar has a New icon with an arrow drop-down menu, listing document types. They are as follows:

●        Text Document: This creates the basic document in Writer that can be saved in OpenDocument Text, DOCX, Rich Text and several other formats.

●        Spreadsheet: This creates the basic document in Calc that can be saved in OpenDocument Spreadsheet, XLSX, and several other formats.

●        Presentation: This creates the basic document in Impress that can be saved in OpenDocument Presentation, PPTX, and several other formats.

●        Drawing: Clicking this opens standard drawing document.

●        Database: This opens the Database Wizard that allows you to create an HSQL database or open an existing database.

●        HTML Document: This creates a new LibreOffice Writer/Web document.The document is similar to the standard Writer document, but it has some different tools and features for creating Web pages. This document can be saved in HTML (html), HTML Document Template (oth), and Text (txt).

●        XML Form Document: This opens an XML Form Document.

●        Master Document: This is a container for multiple documents that compose a complex document such as a book. The documents that are part of the master document are called subdocuments.

●        Formula: This opens an untitled document in Math.

●        Labels: Clicking this opens a Labels dialog that has three tabs: Labels, Format, and Options. Labels allows you to choose the database and table from where the information will be drawn. Format has settings for pitch, width, and heighth, Options lets you set whether it is a single label or entire page.

●        Business Cards: Clicking this launches the Business Cards dialog that has five tabs that allow you to set up the business cards.

●        Templates: This opens the Template Manager. It has tabs for Documents, Spreadsheet, Presentations, and Drawings.

 

Another sub-menu in the File menu of every application and StartCenter is Wizards. This contains a list of items that are dialogs that help you create various types of documents. However, there is not an icon in Standard toolbar.

 

The Wizards are as follows:

●        Letter: This opens a dialog that helps you create a Business, Formal Personal, or a Personal letter. It takes you through list of six steps to create a letter.

●        Fax: This opens a dialog that helps you create a fax page. There are five steps that help you create a Personal or Business fax.

●        Agenda: This guides you through creating a template for an agenda. You can use the template to create an agenda in the future.

●        Presentation: This helps you create a new presentation from a blank document, a template, or an existing template. It allows you to choose the output medium.

●        Web Page: This will allow you to select documents from you hard drive to convert to a file format that can be viewed by a Web browser. It will create

●        Document Converter: This allows you to convert Microsoft Office documents in a directory on your hard drive to OpenDocument formats and put them in another directory of your choosing.

●        Euro Converter: This converts any numbers that are in currencies of various European countries to Euros. The figures can be in spreadsheet documents or in tables in a text document.

●        Address Data Source: This allows you to set up a spreadsheet or a database as a source for address information.

 

Microsoft Office applications do not have this level of integration. If you have Word open, you only have access to Word documents. You cannot open the PowerPoint presentation you worked on yesterday without either first launching PowerPoint or going through your computer’s file system to find the presentation and click on it. Each of Office’s applications has its own document management system, so you can access recently opened workbooks in Excel and create new ones based on Excel templates. You, however, could not do anything with a Word document.

 

LibreOffice’s level of app integration helps with workflow. It reduces the amount of steps to create or open a new document and makes it easier to work with multiple documents at the same time. LibreOffice also makes it easy to switch between documents. The Window menu lists all the documents that are open. Simply clicking one in the list makes it the active window.

 

This is just one of the features that makes LibreOffice a competitive alternative to Microsoft Office. The suite also works well with Office formats, so if you are not completely comfortable ditching Office, you can make it a companion to the Microsoft product.

 

Continue reading “LibreOffice integrates in ways Microsoft Office doesn’t” →

New blog compares Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, and Google Drive

Posted on by timcdana in Google Drive, Office Suite Overview

 One of OS-College’s key focuses is on applications that run equally well on multiple operating systems. They have the same features and tools, regardless of the platform they run on. The first set of applications covered by this communication and education firm is one of the most universal types of applications: office suites. Every industry and almost every person who operates a computer uses one.

 

Microsoft Office has become the most popular office suites over the past few decades. There are other suites, however, ones that work equally well on multiple operating systems. Since Office dominates the market, however, and is the standard for most workers, the purpose of this blog is to compare them and their features to Microsoft Office.

 

This article is first in the series that compares LibreOffice, and sometimes Google Drive, to Microsoft Office. Most of the articles will only compare LibreOffice and Microsoft Office. These two are most alike. They both can be installed on an operating system. They also have many more features than Google Drive and its applications. However, Google Drive has many of the same tools that the other two have and some features that they do not have, so some articles will include Drive.

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