For many years, people worried about digital sovereignty in a Microsoft environment have used on-premise Sharepoint and the embedded Microsoft Office Online (MOO) editors to allow users to collaborate on internal documents with private or confidential data.

However – Microsoft has announced that Office Online Server will reach end of support and retirement on 31 December 2026 and users who want equivalent functionality will need to send their documents to Microsoft’s cloud. From 1 January 2027, organisations still using it will be running without security updates, bug fixes or technical support, in an era of increasingly aggressive AI driven cyber-attacks.

The good news is that for SharePoint environments, Collabora Online can provide an easy drop-in replacement: just install Collabora Online on a server, point SharePoint’s WOPI bindings at it, set the WOPI zone, and users can continue opening and editing their documents locally.

A deadline — and a direction of travel

The end of Office Online Server is part of a wider direction of travel from Microsoft: away from self-hosted control and towards Microsoft hosted Office 365.

For some organisations, that may be acceptable. For many, it creates serious questions. Public sector bodies, regulated industries, sovereign cloud providers, managed service providers and anyone else who values privacy and GDPR compliance cannot move document collaboration deeper into Microsoft’s cloud. Indeed, this was why they originally chose MOO on premise.

As well as those with regulatory needs, many organisations are concerned about moving their data and getting further tied into the Microsoft ecosystem.

Your customers still need document collaboration they control

For integrators and platform providers, the retirement of MOO creates both a challenge and an opportunity.

Namely – customers who rely on Office Online Server need a supported alternative today. Whether they are using it alongside SharePoint, or as part of a wider WOPI-based document workflow, with potentially complex templates, established business processes and existing storage platforms. Something good needs to fill the void.

Microsoft would of course like to steer these customers further into their steadily closing garden, but increasingly organisations are realising they need a solution that works with their infrastructure, not against it.

That is where Collabora Online comes to the rescue.

Collabora Online: the flexible alternative

Self-hosted, fully cloud-based, or as a hybrid model, Collabora Online is a powerful, open-source online office suite for organisations and platforms that need document editing under their own control.

For many MOO use cases, Collabora Online acts as a drop-in, WOPI-compatible alternative. Existing storage platforms can remain in place. Users can continue opening and editing their docx’s, xlsx’s and pptx’s in the browser.

Collabora Online is a natural fit for integrators, hosting providers, platform vendors and service providers who need to give their customers a credible path beyond Office Online Server.

With Collabora Online, you have:

• Self-hosted and private cloud deployment:
  • Keep document editing within infrastructure the customer controls.
• Open-source foundations:
  • Avoid replacing one closed dependency with another.
• Data sovereignty:
  • When you need strong control over where documents are stored, processed and edited.
• Integration with existing platforms:
  • Use our WOPI-like integration and connect document editing to established storage, permissions and workflows.
• Support for Microsoft Office file formats:
  • Allow users to continue working with familiar DOCX, XLSX and PPTX documents in the browser.
• Enjoy the improved features of Collabora Online:
  • Not just all of this, but there are many improvements that you can discover and enjoy in Collabora Online.

A strong fit for SharePoint and WOPI-based workflows

The retirement of Office Online Server is a reminder that digital sovereignty depends on more than storage location. It depends on the whole document stack: the file formats, the editing layer, the integration points, the support model and the long-term roadmap.

Microsoft’s direction is clear: the future of their office stack lives in the Microsoft 365 cloud, and the on-premises editing story is ending with Office Online Server. For customers comfortable with that trajectory, the path is well-signposted. But for those whose regulatory environment, data residency obligations, or long-term strategy requires a self-hosted option, following Microsoft into the cloud isn’t a choice they can make. Fortunately for anyone who has questions about handing the keys to their whole stack (literally?) to one external vendor, there is a credible, supported alternative.

Make Collabora Online your solution

If you have a looming MOO problem, now is the time to act. Audit your current OOS dependencies, and get in touch – we’d love to help you with a demo or integration support.

We can also provide a stop-gap solution for your requirements here, but beware: you may fall in love with a better, truly open solution, and end up in a fresh and exciting digitally sovereign world – which will ultimately free you from ever being forced to make such a change again.

Microsoft’s Office Online Server may be retiring, but self-hosted document collaboration does not have to. Keep online document editing under your control with Collabora Online.

The post Microsoft Office Online Server Ends 1 January 2027. Get the Self-Hosted Alternative Now appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

The next major release of Collabora Online Development Edition is here!

This release brings major improvements with AI-assisted workflows, new editing features, smarter document review, ever-improving document interoperability, accessibility, and of course everyday user experience.

Writer gains smarter review tools, Markdown workflows, easier style access and better navigation for long documents. Calc adds per-user sheet views, more modern functions, table styles, calculated pivot functions with improved filtering and dropdown behaviour. Impress continues to improve collaborative presenting, introduces slides section support, and gets better font embedding. The wider user interface benefits from accessibility work, more flexible dark mode, better settings, sharper PDF rendering, and more flexible document opening behaviour.

Whether you are a developer or open-source enthusiast, using CODE at home or in a small team, CODE 26.04 is packed with improvements that make document editing more capable, more intuitive, and more flexible. Let’s dive into what’s new.

Try the FREE Demo

Get Involved!

Smarter workflows. Powerful data. AI integration.

Collabora Online Development Edition is perfect for small teams, home users, and early adopters looking to explore the latest capabilities. While ideal for testing and development, it is not intended for production environments as it often includes exciting new, but less mature features for people to play with. 

Once thoroughly tested in CODE, new features are moved to Collabora Online (COOL), Collabora Productivity’s open source document editing and collaboration solution with professional service-level agreements (SLA) and technical support. COOL is designed for integration into an organisation’s infrastructure and integrated into many partner collaborative platforms. COOL 26.04 will be available in the coming weeks.

AI Integration in Writer

Writer now benefits from new AI-powered assistance, helping users with tasks such as text suggestions, improvements, and other writing-oriented workflows. This opens the door to faster drafting, easier refinement, and more efficient document creation directly within Collabora Online.

Whether you are polishing internal reports, improving clarity in customer-facing documents, or simply trying to work faster, an AI integration makes Writer more helpful without taking you out of your document workflow.

Compare Writer Documents – Richer document comparison for serious review workflows

Reviewing changes between document versions is now much more powerful. Users can easily compare the current document with an earlier version, from server or as local document, and view insertions, deletions, moved text, images, and tables as colour-coded redlines, complete with author and date details.

This makes it far easier to understand what changed, who changed it, and when, especially in contracts, policy documents, technical documentation, and other high-value review processes.

Changes between versions of a document can be viewed either side-by-side, or using the standard tracked changes dialog.

Multi-Page View in Writer – Easier navigation across long documents

Long-document editing and review is now more comfortable with Multi-Page View in Writer. By showing two pages side-by-side, this feature makes it easier to navigate, review layout, and understand document structure at a glance.

Whether working on reports, manuals, or complex formatted documents, users can now move through content more naturally and with better context.

Redesigned Comment Cards – Clearer, more modern collaboration

Comments have been refreshed with a more modern and readable card design, making it easier to interact with comments, or see at a glance which questions have been resolved.

For teams spending long periods reviewing shared documents, these small usability improvements matter. Better comment presentation means less friction, less visual clutter, and a smoother review experience overall.

Smarter Writer Change Tracking & Reinstate Improvements

Tracked changes are now more intelligent and robust, especially where edits depend on one another. This improves reliability in more demanding review workflows, where accepting or rejecting one change can affect others nearby.

Together with reinstate improvements, this makes review cycles more predictable and better suited to real-world collaborative editing.

Writer Review Toolbar Reorganisation – Better access to key review actions

The Review tab has been reworked, while command buttons were added for new features, important actions such as comments and spellcheck are easier to reach and behave better in tighter toolbar space.

It is a practical but important improvement: the tools people need most during review are now easier to find, faster to use, and better organised across screen sizes.

Writer Navigator Search – Faster movement through complex documents

The Writer Navigator now includes search, showing all results and making it much quicker to jump around long or structured documents.

For users working with headings, sections, objects, or large reports, this turns the Navigator into a more powerful tool for orientation and movement rather than just a static outline.

Writer Style Sidebar Previews – More visual control over formatting

The style sidebar now provides richer previews instead of a simple scrolling list. This makes it easier to identify and apply the right style quickly, especially in documents with many different styles.

For anyone trying to keep formatting consistent across a document, better previews help reduce guesswork and improve confidence. Users can create new styles based on a selection or other style and reuse them in the document.

Markdown Support

Writer now supports Markdown import and export, making it easier to move between document editing and documentation-oriented workflows. This is especially useful for users working across publishing, technical writing, developer documentation, or mixed office and text-based environments. It is also extremely useful for including AI generated styled text, which is often in Markdown format.

Markdown conversion can also now use a template document, giving API and SDK users more control over the styles of branded and structured output. This is a particularly useful improvement for integrators and developers building automated document workflows, where consistent layout and styling matter just as much as the content itself.

It also makes it extremely easy to apply lots of the power of Collabora Office’s document layout functionality to the problem of printing beautiful Markdown.

PDFs with Comments as annotations or in margin

In addition to creating a PDF with comments as annotations, PDF export in Writer now supports including comments in the margin, which is especially useful in review and approval workflows, or when printing hard copies.

Instead of losing discussion context at export time, users can now carry comments through into the PDF when needed for external review, sign-off, or archiving.

Better Screen Space Usage

Default document position and zoom level are now more flexible and calculated to use screen space more effectively, taking into account also Navigator, Sidebar and comments.

That means less wasted space, better defaults, and a more comfortable first impression when opening documents across different devices and display sizes.

AI Integration in Calc

Calc now also benefits from AI-powered assistance, helping with tasks such as analysing spreadsheet data and troubleshooting formula errors.

For users dealing with complex spreadsheets, this can make formula work less intimidating and data analysis more approachable, especially for occasional spreadsheet users who still need powerful results.

Per-User Spreadsheet View

It is now possible for individual users working collaboratively on shared spreadsheets to create their own sheet view and apply filters or see columns or rows according to their own preferences, without affecting others. This enables teams to work collaboratively on spreadsheets filtering for different variables at the same time, without disrupting someone else’s workflow.

Spreadsheeting: handle formula errors elegantly

To help users diagnose and fix formula errors, a floating exclamation mark now appears next to cells with any errors, opening a menu with different options to help users to inspect, edit and fix the formula.

Pivot Tables Calculated Values

Pivot tables aren’t new, but 26.04 introduces support for calculated values in Calc pivot tables, adding an easy way to deal with pivot tables where the desired values may not be in the spreadsheet directly, but those values can be calculated from the spreadsheet data.

This means users are now able to create calculated columns in the pivot table.

Calc Table Styles – Faster formatting, better interop

Calc now includes ready-made table styles with light, medium, dark, and custom themes, including options like banded rows, headers, and totals.

This not only speeds up formatting but also improves interoperability with other editors for .xlsx files, helping spreadsheets preserve expected table styling more accurately across environments.

Work is under way to fully support this feature also for .ods files.

Smarter Dropdown Lists in Calc

Dropdown list controls in spreadsheets have been improved to behave more intuitively.

These kinds of small interaction improvements add up quickly in spreadsheet work, especially when forms, validation, or structured data entry are involved.

New Calc Functions – More modern spreadsheet capability

Calc adds newer spreadsheet functions including CHOOSECOLS, CHOOSEROWS, DROP, EXPAND, HSTACK, TAKE, TEXTAFTER. TEXTBEFORE, TEXTSPLIT, TOCOL, TOROW, VSTACK, WRAPCOLS, WRAPROWS.

These functions make it easier to reshape, extract, and work with data in more modern ways, while also improving compatibility with spreadsheets created elsewhere.

Coloured tabs

You can now right-click a sheet tab, choose Tab Colour, and assign a colour. This is saved in the file and remains interoperable, so the coloured tabs can be read by other software and imported from third-party files.

AI Integration in Impress

AI support in Impress helps users create presentations more efficiently, from early research through to slide preparation. It can help verify and summarise information, convert paragraphs into presentable bullet points, and turn rough ideas into clearer presentation content that is easier to shape into slides.

This is especially useful when starting from longer source material such as reports, notes, or briefing documents, making it faster to build structured, audience-friendly presentations while leaving the final review and design decisions in the hands of the presenter.

Present to All / Follow-Me Slideshows – More reliable collaborative presenting

Collaborative presentations are now more interactive. The presenter starts a presentation, and it can automatically begin for the viewers. Their view will update automatically as the presenter steps to the next slides. If a viewer wants, they can stop the follow mode and independently scroll back within the presentation (asynchronous mode). This enables presentation viewers to check back through slideshows for information they may have missed or want to reference quickly, before returning to the presenter’s view. The presentation viewer cannot go ahead of the leader.

For classrooms, remote training, guided walk-throughs, or just regular boardroom presentations, this means a more advanced presentation experience for all.

Multiple Slide Sizes in One Presentation

Presentations can now contain slides of different sizes in the same file. This gives users more flexibility in building mixed-format presentations, especially where content from different sources, templates, or display formats needs to live together.

This is especially useful when viewing complex PDFs that contain mixed page sizes, where preserving the original layout matters – rather than forcing everything into a single uniform format.

Slide Grouping into Sections

ODP presentations now support overview pages, enabling a more flexible presentation structure with slides organized into sections.

This can be useful for navigation, summaries, and more dynamic presentation design, particularly in longer or more complex slide decks.

Interop

We continue to make great progress in improving our already excellent OOXML file format interoperability, ensuring documents created with Microsoft Office can be opened, rendered, saved, and then returned to a Microsoft Office work environment without loss in data or functionality. This includes implementing new features, and making changes to our rendering engine to stay in line with Microsoft’s behaviour.

Over the past year we have been focusing on validity testing of about 243,000 documents, spreadsheets and presentations in various formats converted to the corresponding OOXML format, with the goal of getting to zero. The following chart shows the progress over the last few months for text documents and presentations.

Arguments suggesting that because we encourage usage of ODF, we must therefore not be appropriate for use with .docx or .xlsx are poor and don’t stand up to scrutiny. Just because we’re great at ODF doesn’t stop us being great at interop too!

Menu Bar Grouping and Tooltips

Notebookbar tabs and overflow behaviour have been improved with better grouping, labels, and dropdown handling to better fit the screen.

This helps the interface stay clearer and more usable, especially as features continue to grow, and users work on varying screens sizes.

Additionally, notebookbar tabs now have tooltips to describe more clearly what a feature does.

In-App Settings Dialog

An in-app settings dialog has been added, meaning users can edit application settings usually found in the EFSS administration settings directly from the document editor interface, avoiding having to go to the integrator’s interface.

That means less hunting for dictionary, document signing, display and dark mode settings, easier changing of AI model settings, and a smoother overall experience when configuring the editor.

Filter Fonts by Typing

In the Tabbed UI, users can now filter fonts by typing part of the font name directly into the font dropdown.

It is a simple quality-of-life improvement, but one that saves time constantly for anyone working with formatting.

Toggle Status Bar Visibility

To provide users with more control over their interface, we implemented a right-click context menu in the status bar to allow users to manually show/hide specific indicators based on their preferences.

Save Images from Docs

In 26.04, you can quickly and easily download graphics from documents. Simply right click an image, and choose to save it. This is useful in many cases where documents are to be ‘transposed’ into a new medium, for example uploading blog posts with images onto a website.

The post CODE 26.04 Release appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Open source doesn’t grow through code alone — it also grows through communities. And communities are built when people meet, share ideas, and sometimes argue over coffee in conference hallways.

In this episode of Open Matters, Richard Brock speaks with Eirini Athanasopoulou from Nextcloud about the human side of open source: events, community, storytelling, and what it takes to bring distributed people together in real life.

Eirini shares her journey from literature and TEDx in Greece to organising international events at Nextcloud, including Enterprise Days, the Nextcloud Summit, and the Community Conference. We talk about why in-person events still matter, how open-source events differ from generic tech conferences, and why event management is “project management with a little bit of fun and magic.”

And yes — there is also a pizza disaster story.

Subscribe for more discussions on open-source tech!
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-matters-podcast/id1807042369 
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4frqRzV9DsAC0HfJ3ewaeD 
RSS: https://www.collaboraonline.com/feed/mp3/

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Collabora Productivity or its affiliates. The content is provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered official guidance or fact-checked technical documentation.

The post How Events Help Build Open Source Communities appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

The post COOL Days 2026 Roundup: Product, Partners, Pizza and Progress in Hamburg appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

You may have seen documents change slightly between tools – sometimes that’s between different companies’ applications, sometimes it’s even the same company’s browser-based or desktop offering. A table moves, a font changes, something is missing, or a layout looks just a bit off.

It’s all because of differences between how documents are described by both editors and file formats. The good news is: modern document editors can be designed to handle the linguistic differences.

How document editors should translate

Modern document formats such as OOXML (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx …) and ODF (.odt, .ods, .odp …) are both highly capable and widely used. But like languages, they express certain details differently.

Each editor has a native file format, like a mother tongue. For Collabora Office, that is ODF, which is a truly open format with an open development process. For Microsoft that is OOXML, “a pseudo-standard that pretends to be open”.

Ideally, a well-designed document editor acts like a skilled translator. It ensures that documents open, display, and behave consistently, even when moving between formats.

To do this, the document editor uses what are known as import and export filters ensuring that features are handled correctly. This does however leave open the question of what to happens to features that are only available in one format and therefore cannot be ‘translated’ (similar to the ‘the’ from the above example).

A good way to illustrate this question is by showing what happens when it goes wrong. Microsoft opens and edits all files in the OOXML format. This means if you open an ODP with the total slide count in the template in PowerPoint for example, a feature OOXML does not have, it permanently throws away the information – even without trying to open or save the file as .pptx. PowerPoint’s mother tongue is OOXML, so it has no idea what <count> means.

This makes us sad! We like to know how much longer a presentation is going to go on for…

In the case of a feature missing between formats in the Collabora Office suite, we tend touse what we call ‘grab bags’ to temporarily store the document feature before saving it again in its original format. Ideally, PowerPoint would operate more like the Collabora Office suite, and recognise this as information it doesn’t fully understand but that should be retained somehow. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Regrettably, this principle is not well understood by many, even by those who are aware of the problem of dependency on Microsoft’s OOXML. Two of the first five issues raised in a new office suite’s GitHub repos are duplicate requests for the suite to default to ODF. Unfortunately the office suite in question is based on a document editor that primarily speaks OOXML and has poor ODF support, so the requests are unlikely to be actioned.

Not all technologies speak the same language

Many (most?) Microsoft Office users will have noticed that Microsoft Office features look and behave differently depending on if a document is opened in the browser, or using the desktop app. This is because the applications known to most as “Microsoft Office” are in fact two independently developed applications – Word Desktop and Word Web. Confusing the situation further, Microsoft appears to have multiple and slightly differing descriptions of how features operate between the two.

Technically, this is a different question to file format interoperability, but feature availability is nonetheless important and plays a significant role in the interoperability equation. There’s no point having a document editor that cannot edit your documents right? Microsoft disagrees it would seem: “Microsoft Word Web App lets you make basic edits and formatting changes to your document in a web browser. For more advanced features, use Word Web App’s Open in Word command […] some features work differently in the two environments.” (Accessed 31/03/2026)

Fortunately for users of the Collabora Office suite, with the newly released Collabora Office, they can enjoy one and the same editing and document rendering experience whether editing documents in-browser, or on their desktop thanks to the fully shared codebase between the two apps.

Achieving perfect interoperability

We’d like to say that we are perfect translators, understanding everything and converting 100% of documents flawlessly, but this would be untrue. What we can say is we are excellent at working with both Microsoft file formats and ODF.

Additionally, unlike most Microsoft format based editors, we think it is important to work well with both legacy document types, as well as the open future. Arguments suggesting that because we encourage usage of ODF, we must therefore not be appropriate for use with .docx or .xlsx are poor and don’t stand up to scrutiny. Just because we’re great at ODF doesn’t stop us being great at interop too.

While we prefer ODF dues to it’s openness and documentation, we support and develop OOXML, both for new features that come with new versions. As a company, we deliberately use both formats internally, and do not encounter issues in our regular working. With our support these minor dialectical difference don’t need to hold up real-world large-scale migrations either.

Among other efforts to improve interoperability, over the past year we have been focusing on validity testing of about 243 000 documents, spreadsheets and presentations in various formats converted to the corresponding OOXML format, with the goal of getting to zero. The following chart shows the progress over the last few months for spreadsheets and presentations.

You should be able to open a document, edit it, share it, and know it will behave as expected. This will only be fully achieved as the world moves to a truly open standard, and away from the Microsoft owned/governed semi-proprietary confusion.

Additionally your documents should behave the same in your browser, on your desktop, or in your pocket. This is now possible with shared-codebase programs like Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

In the meantime, we continue to deal with the reality of ubiquitous Microsoft-format legacy documents, and are pleased that the vast majority of users will not discover issues opening and editing Microsoft file types in their day to day work with Collabora Office.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, we encourage you to try out the Collabora Office suite – and enjoy working across platforms and formats with confidence.

The post Interop EXPLAINED appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Germany isn’t just talking about digital sovereignty — it’s building it.

80,000+ users pilot scheme

8 vendors, one platform

Federal rollout coming in 2027

Inside ZenDiS and openDesk — and what it really takes to assemble a sovereign digital workplace with open source. In this episode, Richard Brock is joined by Victor Moster (ZenDiS) and Thorsten Behrens (Collabora Productivity).

Subscribe for more discussions on open-source tech!

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-matters-podcast/id1807042369

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4frqRzV9DsAC0HfJ3ewaeD

RSS: https://www.collaboraonline.com/feed/mp3/

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Collabora Productivity or its affiliates. The content is provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered official guidance or fact-checked technical documentation.

The post Germany’s Digital Experiment – Can Governments Build Their Own Tech Stack? appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

We don’t just work from a desk. We work from trains, coffee shops and waiting rooms. And yet for many, mobile document apps are a compromise. Perhaps useful to quickly open a file, check a detail, or make a small change, but often falling short when it comes to faithfully displaying the document you created elsewhere.

That matters more than it might seem, and means mobile apps are often ignored. When a document is part of a real workflow – a contract, a report, a spreadsheet, a presentation, a policy paper, a flow diagram, a bid, or a briefing – you need to trust that what you see on your phone or tablet is the same document your colleagues see on desktop or in the browser. Not an approximation. Not a simplified version. The same document.

That is where Collabora Office for Mobile comes in.

A common code base for desktop and mobile

Collabora Office for Mobile is not a separate, cut-down document viewer built around different assumptions. It uses the same core rendering engine as Collabora Office for desktop and Collabora Online in the browser.

That means documents are rendered consistently across the full Collabora Office suite. Whether you open a file on your desktop, in your browser, or on your phone while travelling, you are working from the same foundation. Layout, formatting, tables, images, charts, styles, and document structure are handled by the same underlying engine.

You can review a document on your phone and know that you are seeing the document as it really is. You can check a presentation before a meeting, review a spreadsheet while travelling, or read a report in the field without worrying that the mobile app has shifted something, hidden something, or interpreted it differently. When documents move between devices, that consistency matters.

Many document apps on the market prioritise convenience, but can introduce rendering differences depending on format, feature support, or the platform you are using. That may be acceptable for casual notes or lightweight editing. It is not acceptable when the document itself carries real operational, legal, or organisational importance. Collabora Office for Mobile is designed for those moments where accuracy matters just as much as access.

Why rendering consistency matters

Collabora Office for Mobile is especially valuable because it fits into a wider document workflow rather than sitting outside it. It works as the perfect accompaniment to Collabora Online and Collabora Office on desktop, helping form a complete and rounded office suite across devices.

This makes it particularly useful for people who are frequently away from their desks. Travelling employees can review meeting materials on the move. Field staff can access documents in operational environments. Engineering teams, logistics workers, consultants, inspectors, and public-sector teams can all open the documents they need with greater confidence that what they are viewing is accurate. In some contexts this is simply about convenience. In others, it is about mistakes.

A different UI for a different device

Of course, a mobile app cannot simply copy a desktop interface onto a phone screen and call it done.
Phones and tablets are very different environments. On a small display, screen space is limited, touch is your main input method, and the on-screen keyboard immediately competes for room with menus, toolbars, and document content. Designing a good office experience for mobile is difficult precisely because documents themselves have not become simpler, even if the screen has become smaller.

That is why we have invested heavily in optimising the mobile user experience.

It is also worth distinguishing between using Collabora Online on a mobile phone or tablet browser, and using the dedicated mobile app. In a mobile browser, users are still working through their EFSS or integration platform, so they will retain access to platform-specific features such as granular user-based permissions, @ing users in documents or comments, version-history lgging, etc. The dedicated mobile app on the other hand offers the same beautiful Collabora editing interface, but cannot include all of these integration-specific controls. This is not a limitation of the Collabora Office for Mobile app, but is because mobile apps operate within highly sandboxed environment. In practice, that means the app delivers the same document rendering and editing experience, while the browser remains the route to the wider EFSS workflow around the document.

On tablets, Collabora Office for Mobile provides a much more desktop-like interface, giving users more familiar controls and a layout that makes better use of the larger screen. This is particularly important for users who want continuity between desktop and tablet workflows, or who use a tablet as a serious work device rather than just a companion screen.
On phones, the interface becomes more responsive and adaptive. Menus and controls can step back when needed so that the document itself gets more space, especially once the keyboard is open and the user is typing. That sounds simple, but getting the balance right is not easy. Too many controls on screen, and the document becomes cramped and frustrating to use. Too few, and editing becomes awkward. A good mobile office app needs to know when to stay visible and when to get out of the way.

The goal is not to pretend that a phone is a desktop replacement in every scenario. The goal is to make sure that when you do need to act on a document from your mobile device, the experience is clear, capable, and dependable.

Accessibility matters too

A modern office suite also has to work well for everyone. That includes users who rely on accessibility tools and assistive technologies.

Collabora Office for Mobile includes strong accessibility support, including screen reader functionality, helping more users work with documents effectively on mobile devices. That is important not only from an inclusion perspective, but also from a practical one. Mobile access should not come at the expense of usability.

One suite, across every screen

The real value of Collabora Office for Mobile is not just that it works on phones and tablets. It is that it fits into a larger picture.

Desktop, browser, and mobile should not feel like separate worlds with different document behaviour and different levels of trust. They should be different ways of accessing the same office experience, adapted sensibly for each device.
That is what Collabora Office for Mobile helps deliver – the same document engine, thoughtful mobile design, practical editing, strong accessibility, and a natural companion to the rest of the Collabora Office suite.

Ready for document editing in your pocket? Try it out today!

The post Collabora Office for Mobile: Your Documents, Fully Rendered on the Go appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

A quick, practical explanation of Git?

Developed in 2005, Git is the system most modern open-source software uses to manage code.

At its simplest, Git answers three questions:

• What changed?
• Who changed it & when?
• How does this relate to everything that came before?

But the important thing isn’t just tracking changes – it’s how Git enables collaboration.

Everyone has the whole project

With Git, every developer can have a full copy of the codebase on their own machine.

Not just the latest version – the entire history.

That means no single server is “the” source of truth, work doesn’t stop if a service goes offline, and it enables developers to work independently, offline, and in parallel
Each copy is complete and verifiable.

Work happens in many repositories

Instead of everyone editing the same version of the code at once, Git encourages work to happen on clones. There are many reasons for this, but essentially it enables developers to try new features and fixes on the code, without potentially causing disruption to others.

Copies can be short-lived or long-running, shared or private. They’re simple to create, easy to merge, and easy to discard.

Parallel development is the standard operating procedure.

Git makes independence normal - not exceptional

Git isn’t just a version control system; it’s a different way of thinking about collaboration.

With Git:

• Everyone can have a complete copy of the codebase
• Every copy usually includes the entire history, in a cryptographically linked chain
  
  • This makes it extremely difficult to smuggle in malicious changes unnoticed. You can’t quietly rewrite the past – any alteration breaks this chain of links and is immediately detectable.
• Every developer can work on their own code, at their own pace
• A single developer can pull code from multiple remote sources
• Code can flow between repositories, not just “up” or “down”

This is what makes Git a real powerhouse in the programming world. Each commit hash uniquely defines the full history up to that point and the entire repository state. Provenance is built in. Trust is verifiable. Collaboration doesn’t depend on a single server or a single workflow.

Built-in resilience and disaster recovery

One of the most overlooked strengths of Git’s distributed model is resilience. Because every clone is a complete copy of the project – including its full history – the future of the codebase does not depend on a single server, organisation, or hosting provider to survive.

If a hosting platform disappears, the project does not disappear with it. If a company changes direction, the code remains available. If infrastructure fails, development can continue from any full copy.

Traditional software vendors often rely on expensive source code escrow agreements as a safeguard in case a supplier collapses. With open-source software managed by Git, this protection comes baked into the technical architecture for everyone.

Disaster recovery is no longer a contingency plan, it is the default state of the system.

This resilience matters deeply for governments, enterprises, and long-term infrastructure projects. Software that underpins critical systems must not depend on a single point of failure – organisational or technical.

More forks than a restaurant ?

In some git-based development flows, the process of creating your own repository to work on new features and fixes independently is called forking.

On platforms like GitHub, it’s a prominent button at the top of the page because it’s a normal part of how distributed development works.

At the time of this screenshot for example, there were 978 forked copies of the Collabora Online source code – most of them made by developers eager to contribute back to the goodness – we love that!

Multiple remotes, multiple maintainers, multiple priorities, connected by shared code, shared history, bonds of friendship and collaboration powered by the Git synchronisation protocol. The choice of hosting and infrastructure becomes an almost irrelevant detail, with developers choosing the tools and processes that best support their work.

Improvements can be exchanged, and collaboration can happen without requiring everyone to follow the same internal processes or timelines.

At the same time, in ecosystems with many development paths, trusted editors play a critical role in curating, integrating, and supporting coherent, branded, secure releases.

The post Distributed by Design: How Modern Open Source Works appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Sovereignty or Legacy, You Choose

There is a lot of energy right now around European digital stacks. Self-hosted infrastructure. Local control. Reduced dependence on American cloud vendors. And all of that matters.

It seems to be a pattern that people take other people’s software that they have not written, and will struggle to support and put their brand on it, and wrap a European flag around it

But we should be honest about one thing – you are not sovereign if Microsoft still defines the fundamental design of your application, as well as your document formats.

You can move the server. You can change the branding. You can even swap out one vendor for another. But if the office layer at the heart of your stack is still at root built around Microsoft’s file formats, then they still set the rules that matter most. Your documents live inside a model you do not control, cannot meaningfully govern, and have no real power to shape.

That is not digital sovereignty. That is a hosting decision.

Self-hosting is not the same as sovereignty

A self-hosted office suite built around OOXML may reduce dependency on Microsoft 365 as a service. It may reduce exposure to American hyperscalers. It may tick some procurement boxes. But it does not solve the deeper problem – after all, you could do this with SharePoint 2019 till recently.

OOXML is Microsoft’s document model, standardised after the fact. Microsoft’s own documentation clearly describes .docx .xlsx and .pptx as formats to “support the features and behavior of Microsoft Office” while noting that ODF and Open XML reflect different application behaviours and feature sets. These are not neutral containers floating above the market, they reflect the architecture, priorities and direction of the organisations that created them.

That matters because formats are not just a way to save files. They encode the document model itself: what features exist, how layouts behave, how compatibility is judged, what gets preserved, and what gets lost. If you open an .odp presentation with the total slide count in the template in Microsoft PowerPoint, or save the file as a .pptx for example, PowerPoint and the .pptx file format simply throw away the information. If you want that feature back, good luck with the Microsoft support forums…

In short, if your strategy is to architect your software around Microsoft’s models, you can play with the UI styling and colours, but your product direction is being decided elsewhere.

You can call that interoperability, you can call it compatibility, for legacy workflows, it is certainly important and necessary. But you cannot call this strategy sovereignty.

Don’t get confused by marketing

There is nothing wrong with saying a product has strong OOXML interoperability – we all work on it. The mistake is turning that into the main sovereignty story.

ONLYOFFICE, for example, leans heavily on this message. Its public materials describe its editor as using OOXML natively, with all files converted into the format “when opening and editing files”.

Quoting directly: “If the file format is different from OOXML, it will still be converted to the corresponding OOXML […] As the formats are fundamentally different, some data (such as charts, tables, autoshapes or images) and formatting can be lost due to the simple reason that some formats […] treat them differently than OOXML standard does.”

That’s great if you want to centre your digital strategy around Microsoft, but absurd as the centrepiece of a digital sovereignty pitch.

True interoperability is: “We can work with the legacy world.”

And true sovereignty says: “We won’t build our future around the proprietary past.”

If your product story begins and ends with how closely you follow Microsoft’s formats, then your roadmap is still architected by Microsoft.

The post You Are Not Sovereign If Microsoft Still Architects Your Documents appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Protect

Some of the most important security features are the simplest ones: preventing the wrong change in the wrong place.

The simplest way to achieve this is to impose read-only access over some documents. Complimenting read-only control, Collabora Online also offers restriction of specific commands such as copying or printing documents. Unlike other document editors however, Collabora Online enforces these controls at the server side, helping ensure that restrictions are not just cosmetic interface choices. Combined with another server-enforced option of watermarking documents with user-specific details (not merely pasting ‘Confidential’ wording over the document), integrators and their end-users enjoy meaningful protection of the editing of documents, especially relevant in larger organisations to add confidence documents aren’t being downloaded or shared en-masse.

In many cases however, it is useful for users to be able to edit some parts of documents, but not others. In spreadsheets, features such as cell protection and sheet protection help teams preserve the integrity of critical information. That matters in budgeting, reporting, procurement, and operational planning, where some users may need to input or review data without altering formulas, structures, or approved sections. In practice, this helps turn a spreadsheet from a loose working file into a more controlled business document.

In written documents, section editing with optional password protection for individual paragraphs or longer ‘sections’ achieves the same goal. With section editing in Writer, the inverse may also be achieved such that sections in read-only documents can be made editable if needs be.

Control

Secure editing however is not about universally blocking change. It is about making sure the right people have the right level of access at the right time.

This is where platform integrations really matters. Integrating with Collabora Online, partners can enable custom per-user, per-document permissions, secure sharing controls, and granular guest access without breaking the connection between editing and the wider content system. The strength here is not that Collabora Online adds an additional control model to the storage platforms, but that it fits into it. Thanks to the WOPI-like protocol, permissions remain tied to the environment that already governs the document, instead of being redefined in the document editor.

Sensitive personal information, HR records, procurement documents, legal drafts, or citizen case files should not need to leave the managed environment just to be edited or reviewed. The more steps, services, and exports involved, the harder it becomes to maintain control. Collabora Online helps partners offer a cleaner model – keeping the workflows centralised, and access policy in one place.

Review

Because accountability is a security feature too.

In Writer, per-user tracked changes make it much easier to understand who changed what, and when. Changes are not only highlighted in red, but are tracked on a per-user basis. Each user has their own colour, and mousing over the change will show you who made the addition or deletion, and when. For review-heavy workflows, that is not just helpful for collaboration, it seriously strengthens auditability. In contracts, policies, internal approvals, and public-sector drafting, teams need a clear record of proposed edits and editorial responsibility. Named changes help make the review process visible rather than opaque.

Our newly released document comparison tool adds a further powerful layer here. Being able to compare two documents, and immediately highlight differences is invaluable anywhere precision matters, but especially in legal and contract workflows. Instead of relying on manual checks or trusting that nothing has been altered between versions, users can now see exactly what has been changed.

Version history also contributes to this broader accountability story. With the integration’s file storage layer and Collabora Online working in tandem, this is an important part of the overall secure workflow that integrators can offer end-users. Together, these powerful review features create a much stronger review chain most competitors can offer.

Signing

Unfortunately, document signing is one of the clearest examples where secure workflows break down.

Many organisations now end up sending all of their most sensitive documents to a third-party signing service, adding an additional storage layer (and jurisdiction?), another vendor relationship, and ending any on-premise or data-sovereignty promises (where is your document signing platform based?) Built-in PDF signing based on a document hash and not it’s content – directly from your document editor offers a better path. It allows integrators to support signing inside the document workflow rather than handing documents and data to someone else.

That matters for both privacy and process. Sensitive agreements, approvals, and public-facing forms should not be exported into a disconnected workflow just to get a signature. It also helps organisations simplify compliance-sensitive processes by reducing unnecessary exposure and keeping the entire document lifecycle within the integrator’s own platform.

The post How Collabora Online Helps Integrations Build Safer Document Workflows appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.