Get started with ONLYOFFICE

What you get out of this

The business plan has to be written, the budget has to be calculated and the sales presentation has to be built. Someone has Office, someone has Google, and the private computers may have neither. And anyone sitting at home on a Linux computer suddenly gets a file that looks broken when it opens.

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is an office suite with three programs in one: text, spreadsheet and presentation, plus a PDF reader. What sets it apart from most free alternatives is that it is built directly for the .docx, .xlsx and .pptx formats. So you open a file you received from a client, change it, send it back, and it looks the same at the other end.

The program is free and open source under AGPL version 3, works without an internet connection and is available for both Windows and Linux Mint. You can use it in your business without paying or registering.

Before you start

• A computer with Windows 10 or 11, or Linux Mint 21 or later.
• About 1 GB of free space on the hard drive. The program is bigger than a simple text editor, it is three programs.
• Twenty minutes for the installation, including the download.
• A place where the company's files will be stored. Decide that first, otherwise the business plan ends up on one computer.

Install on Windows

Go to onlyoffice.com and download the desktop version, or take the file directly from the project's releases page on GitHub. The files are called DesktopEditors_x64.exe and DesktopEditors_x64.msi, and both install the same thing. Take the exe file if you are unsure.

During the installation you are asked whether ONLYOFFICE should open office files by default. If you answer yes, the program takes over double-clicks on .docx and the other formats. If you have Office installed on the same computer and want to keep it as the default, answer no. You can always right-click and choose a program.

The first start shows a start page where you choose what you want to create. There is also a list of recently opened files, which is the page you will use most.

Install on Linux Mint

ONLYOFFICE is not in Mint's own software repositories, so sudo apt install onlyoffice-desktopeditors gets you nowhere. Choose one of three routes.

The deb file from the project. Download onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb from their download page and install it in Terminal (the folder may be called Downloads instead of Hämtningar if Mint was installed in English):

cd ~/Hämtningar
sudo apt install ./onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb

The dot and slash before the file name tell apt that the package is in the folder you are standing in. Without them, apt looks for a package in the repositories and finds nothing.

Flatpak, which Mint has ready with Flathub added. Search for ONLYOFFICE in the Software Manager, or run:

flatpak install flathub org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors

AppImage. On the releases page you find DesktopEditors-x86_64.AppImage. Download it, right-click the file, open Properties and Permissions, check that the file may run as a program, and double-click. No installation at all, good on a computer where you are not allowed to install anything.

The deb file is the one we recommend if you can choose freely: it associates the file types correctly. If you only install the loose file, however, it is not updated automatically. That requires you to also add ONLYOFFICE's own apt repository according to their download page, otherwise you have to download the next deb file by hand.

The three programs, and what you do in them

Word for the business plan, the contracts and the letter to the partner. It works the way a word processor does: headings in the style box at the top left, not bold plus a larger font by hand. If you use real heading styles, you get a table of contents for free through References and Table of Contents, and it updates itself when sections change places.

Excel for the budget and the sales. The formulas you need in a business are four: =SUMMA(), =MEDEL(), =OM() and =ANTAL.OM(). Formula names normally follow the language the program is set to, so if it says =SUM() for someone else in the company, it is usually the language setting that differs, not the file.

PowerPoint for the customer meeting and for the trade fair you exhibit at. Stick to one idea per slide and do not write down what you are going to say anyway. A slide with three words and a good image beats a slide with seven bullet points, every time.

All three save in the Office formats by default. If you need to send something that cannot be changed, choose File and then Save as and pick PDF.

Connect the program to the company's file storage

This is the step that makes you stop emailing files to each other. In the left column of the home page there is an option to connect to a cloud service, and according to the project's own documentation, Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, Dropbox and Box are among those supported.

If you already run Nextcloud, that is the one you point to, but it requires more than just entering the address and logging in. Nextcloud also needs the ONLYOFFICE app installed and connected to a separate ONLYOFFICE Docs server, otherwise the connection refuses to work. Once that is in place, files open and save directly there without you downloading and uploading them by hand, and several people in the company can work in the same document at the same time.

If you do not have your own file storage, the program works just as well with an ordinary synced folder on your computer. What matters is not which solution you choose, but that you choose a single one and that everyone in the company uses the same one.

The traps with files sent back and forth

Do not make three copies of the business plan with names like affarsplan_slutlig_2_ny.docx. You will send the wrong file. Agree on one file in one place, and let it have the same name all the time.

If the file is going to someone outside the company, for example a business partner or an investor: send a PDF. Then it looks the same on their end, no matter what software they have, and no one happens to change it.

If someone in the company uses an older program that wants .doc instead of .docx, save the file again in that format instead of sending it and hoping. The conversion sometimes loses advanced formatting, so look through the result before you send it.

How you know it worked

• The program starts and you see the home page with the three choices.
• A .docx that someone else created opens and looks right, with headings and page breaks in place.
• You can save as PDF and open the PDF file in the browser.
• The spreadsheet calculates a sum with a formula you wrote yourself.
• The files are in the company's shared folder or file area, not in Downloads.

If something goes wrong

The document looks different than it does for the recipient. Almost always a font that is missing on your computer. Switch to a common font in the whole document, or send it as a PDF when the appearance matters.

The program does not start on Mint after installing the deb file. Run sudo apt --fix-broken install in Terminal. The deb file may need packages that were not included.

It is not possible to type in the document. The file is opened in review mode or is read-only, for example directly from an email or a zip archive. Save it to your computer first and open it from there.

The formula gives the wrong result. Check the delimiter. With Swedish settings, arguments are separated by semicolons, and a formula pasted from an English source uses commas.

The file opens in another program when you double-click it. Right-click, choose to open with ONLYOFFICE and check the box to always use that choice.

The connection to the file area is denied. Check the address, it should be the full address of your server with https first, not just the domain name.

What you do next

Create the business plan as an empty document today and add the headings you know should be there. A document with headings and nothing under them fills itself in over the year. An empty document gets written the night before.

The logo you make in Inkscape goes straight into documents and presentations, and the draft text for the business plan can easily be written in Joplin first and moved here when it is done.