Features Archives - Collabora Online and Collabora Office

Interop EXPLAINED

Richard Brock — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:46:57 +0000

Confused by buzzwords? You’re not alone.

EXPLAINED is a new explainer series for people who work with technology – but don’t want marketing fluff or academic theory.

We break down complex digital topics clearly and practically: what they mean, why they matter, and how they work in the real world.

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.

Not all formats speak the same language

English and Chinese are the two most commonly spoken languages, each with over 1 billion speakers. Both languages are used effectively every day to describe the world, conduct business, govern, teach, and communicate. They don’t however encode information in exactly the same way, and each contains unique words and features.

Let’s take a look at a simple example:

English: Where is the OOXML proprietary documentation?

Chinese: OOXML专有文档在哪里？(OOXML proprietary documentation is where?)

The difference in word order is obvious. With a little study, even an average student will learn to make the change reliably.

Less obvious perhaps is that the Chinese sentence is missing a ‘the’ equivalent. This is because Chinese has no definite (or indefinite) article. This creates the possibility of data loss when the sentence is ‘round tripped’ from English to Chinese and back to English, perhaps resulting in the erroneous final output, “Where is OOXML proprietary documentation?”

Fortunately for anyone invested in international communications/trade/politics/sport, these translation questions are easily resolved with an experienced translator. Similarly for anyone interested in document interoperability, the question is well served by a document editor such as Collabora Office.

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 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.

Achieving perfect interop?

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.

Collabora Office for Mobile: Your Documents, Fully Rendered on the Go

Richard Brock — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:31:47 +0000

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.

How Collabora Online Helps Integrations Build Safer Document Workflows

Richard Brock — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:58:47 +0000

When organisations talk about secure document handling, the conversation often jumps straight to infrastructure, hosting, and technical architecture. Those things matter, but they are only part of the picture. Security depends just as much on what users are able to do inside the document workflow.

For integrators building platforms for governments, education, legal teams, healthcare providers, or any other organisations handling sensitive information, secure editing is not just about opening a file securely. It is about keeping control of review, access, approval, and sharing inside the environment you manage.

This post aims to outline how the user-facing features of Collabora Online further strengthen the story for our partners and integrations. We will have another piece coming out soon about how the architecture of Collabora Online keeps documents secure.

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.

Why this all matters for integrations

For integrators, the opportunity with Collabora Online is bigger than adding online editing (this is of course already a significant step!).

Collabora Online helps partners and integrators build secure workflows around documents by combining familiar editing with practical controls. Protection inside of documents, accountable review of changes, server-enforced access controls, integrated signing, and permission-aware access through open interfaces. For government and regulated sectors in particular, this is far more compelling than other editing experiences.

Secure document handling is not just about where software runs and the technical architecture. It is just as much about whether the features inside the editor help organisations and users stay in control. That is what customers increasingly need, and it is where Collabora Online gives partners a strong and secure story.

Integrate Collabora Online today, and secure your workflows.

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

WOPI Is Open. Your Office Stack Should Be Too.

Richard Brock — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:00:02 +0000

Web Application Open Platform Interface (WOPI) is a REST-based protocol originally developed by Microsoft to enable web-based document editing between third-party applications.

It’s the “plumbing” that connects document storage systems (such as Microsoft SharePoint, file servers or cloud storage) with online office suites for seamless editing experiences. Microsoft created WOPI in 2012 as part of its transition to cloud-based Office 365. (For a more light-hearted run through this topic, check out this post!)

WOPI abstracts document storage from editing applications and defines standardised ways for incorporating:

Authentication: Between storage systems and office applications
Metadata exchange: File properties, user permissions and capabilities
Storage operations: Load, Save, Save-As, Locking
Session management: For concurrent user editing

The protocol handles authentication, file metadata, content retrieval, conversion and saving. Everything needed to edit documents is stored in one system using editing tools from another system, so it enables an office editing platform to access documents without requiring direct access to the storage system.

A Sovereign WOPI?

While WOPI is often associated with Microsoft’s cloud-operated Office Online services, the protocol itself does not require vendor-controlled infrastructure. Collabora Online demonstrates how a WOPI-like protocol can be used with private cloud, sovereign cloud, or on-premise deployments, without introducing external service dependencies.

1. Data Sovereignty

Collabora Online runs entirely within infrastructure you control – whether on-premise, private cloud, or a sovereign public cloud provider. Documents, editing operations, and user metadata remain within your chosen jurisdiction and administrative domain at all times.

2. Open Source Foundation

All of Collabora Online (our WOPI-like protocol and document editor) is fully open source and auditable. This includes request handling, permission evaluation, document lifecycle management, and save semantics – allowing organisations to verify behaviour, meet regulatory requirements, or adapt integrations to local policy.

3. No Telemetry

Collabora Online does not require telemetry, analytics callbacks, or external service connectivity. The integration can function entirely within the deployment environment, including in restricted networks and regulated environments where outbound connections are prohibited.

Migrating Without Disruption

Lowering Risk Without Breaking Existing Workflows

Migrating an online office solution is often perceived as high risk – particularly where document locking, synchronisation, and existing integrations are involved. Collabora Online is designed to minimise that risk by maintaining WOPI compatibility while addressing common pain points encountered in real-world deployments.

At its core, Collabora Online can act as a drop-in WOPI-compatible editor, allowing organisations to migrate editing workloads without changing storage platforms, user workflows, or integration patterns.

Safer Locking for Sync-and-Share Environments

Traditional file-locking mechanisms often conflict with modern file sync and share systems, particularly during collaborative editing or partial migrations. Our solution eliminates traditional file-locking mechanisms that conflict with standard file sync and share patterns, instead using timestamp-based conflict detection and auto-expiring lease-based locks.

Fast Integration With Existing Systems

For teams integrating Collabora Online into custom platforms, implementation effort is deliberately kept low. A basic WOPI integration is very fast, with supported SDK examples available for common environments including Node.js, PHP, Python, React, and .NET.

In addition, we have a list of available full production-grade integrations, including Drupal and WordPress integration, in the SDK.

Node.js example – integrating COOL via iFrame in Node.js. (Requires familiarity with npm and the node.js framework.)
PHP example – integrating Collabora Online via iFrame in PHP. Note: Apache Web Server must be installed on the host machine and started. Also requires PHP module for Apache to be installed and loaded.
Python example – A simple example integrating Collabora Online via iFrame in Python. (Requires familiarity with Python and Django framework.)
ReactJS example – A simple example integrating Collabora Online via iFrame in ReactJS and Express. We assume you are familiar with ReactJS, npm and node.js framework.
.NET example – A simple example integrating Collabora Online via iFrame with .NET backend.

More Than a Like-for-Like Replacement

While Collabora Online can be introduced as a direct replacement, its WOPI-based integration also enables additional capabilities that organisations can adopt incrementally. These include document conversion APIs commonly used for previews, richer configuration options, and integration with open-source tools such as Zotero for citation management.

These enhancements do not require changes to document storage or access models, allowing organisations to extend functionality after migration rather than during it.

Secure Viewing for Secure Sharing

While Collabora Online provides many integration features through its WOPI-based APIs, it shares pixels of documents – rendered tiles, to another user’s screen and not the document itself. In addition, the pixels can be further secured by including server-side watermarks, which may include the name of user viewing the file for example. Collabora Online does not store any of the data itself.

Real-World Migration Case Studies

Dutch Education and Research (SURF)

From: Microsoft Office Online + various storage requirements
To: NextCloud + Collabora Online
Result: ~100,000 users, complete data sovereignty, significant cost reduction

SURF, the Netherlands education and research network, exemplifies large-scale success with 100,000 users across 59 institutions processing 850GB of data daily with 21 new users added continuously. This deployment replaces traditional commercial alternatives while providing superior security and data control.

University of Lille

From: Mixed Microsoft/Google environment
To: Nextcloud + Collabora Online
Result: 70,000 users, standardised tooling, enhanced security

The University of Lille serves 70,000 users (67,000 students and 6,300 staff) through Nextcloud integration, achieving standardised office tools across diverse IT cultures. “The University is really aiming at facilitating open standards across the whole campus,” IT Director Cédric Foll.

German Federal Government

From: Microsoft 365
To: openDesk (sovereign cloud + Collabora Online)
Result: Digital sovereignty compliance, reduced foreign dependency

Recently the German federal government launched the openDesk initiative to migrate from Microsoft 365 to a sovereign digital workplace combining Collabora Online, Nextcloud, and other productivity applications.

Break Vendor Lock-In Without Breaking Your Stack

Collabora Online provides a clear path away from Microsoft dependency while preserving familiar workflows, integration patterns, and operational models. By building on Microsoft’s own open WOPI protocol, organisations gain the freedom to choose an interoperable editor without rewriting their storage, identity, or collaboration layers.
For CTOs evaluating long-term strategy, Collabora Online’s WOPI implementation offers a rare and practical combination:

Compatibility with existing Microsoft-based workflows
Independence from vendor-controlled cloud services
Predictable cost savings through open-source economics
Security and compliance through self-managed deployment

If reducing platform risk, cost exposure, and dependency is part of your roadmap, Collabora Online enables migration on your terms – incrementally, safely, with long term flexibility built in.

Contact us today to discuss how office migration can transform your workflows and position your organisation for continued success. Visit collaboraonline.com or contact our engineering sales team at hello@collaboraoffice.com to explore your opportunities.

The post WOPI Is Open. Your Office Stack Should Be Too. appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Why the Best Online Office Doesn’t Try to Store Your Files

Richard Brock — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 10:59:58 +0000

Keep your storage. Upgrade your editing.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Collabora Online is a “cloud drive”, the simple answer is no. We are focussed on making the best document editor possible, and don’t handle document storage.

For document storage, we integrate beautifully with Enterprise File Sync & Share solutions (EFSS). If you are more technically minded, and want a more in-depth look at how we do that, check out this post, but for a more light-hearted run through, read on here…

Collabora Online is a kitchen. It’s where the work happens – chopping, mixing, frying, baking. Rendering, editing, tracked changes, comments, styles, spreadsheets, presentations and formulas. The process of making beautiful and powerful documents happens here.

Your Enterprise File Sync & Share solution is the fridge (a really smart fridge). Nextcloud, OpenCloud, Seafile, SharePoint, etc. The fridge handles storing what you’ve made, plus who can open the door: access control, sharing links, retention policies, DLP, all that operational goodness. (OK OK! – most modern EFSS solutions do way more than storage. Our partners and integrators are doing awesome things with video-calls, calendars, email, projects management etc. But no one has invented a fridge/dishwasher/smoke-alarm/100-seater dining table combo yet, so we’re going to stick with the fridge analogy for now!)

You don’t cook in the fridge, and you don’t keep food out on the kitchen worktop.

Collabora Online runs in stateless containers by design: we open what your EFSS hands us, let you create your masterpiece, and continuously sync changes back to your EFSS – no long-term storage in the editor. The sharing uses a WOPI-like communication standard making sure the fridge and the kitchen speak the same language. If you want a new fridge? No problem! Bigger, smaller, one of the models with an integrated ice-cube dispenser? No problem. You use what works for you, and we make the rest of the kitchen fast, reliable, and a joy to cook in.

But surely Microsoft does everything right?

It’s undeniably convenient when your editor, storage, chat, meetings and identity all live under one roof. That tight integration is a big reason many people don’t realise there’s a difference between SharePoint/OneDrive (storage/EFSS) and Office for the web (the editor). For many teams, “It’s all Microsoft” just… works.

The trade-offs show up when you need choice and control.

Where your fridge lives. Microsoft’s cloud is, by default, their cloud. If you need data-hosting choices, on-premise hosting, or jurisdictional control, the options narrow quickly – especially now that Office Online Server (the self-hostable web editor) has an end-of-support date and no like-for-like on-prem replacement1, forcing organisations to Microsoft 365’s cloud services. If you want control over where you keep your food, this is a problem.
How extensible the experience is. In a closed ecosystem you inherit one vendor’s timeline and guardrails. If you want a particular governance stack, a specific link-sharing model, unusual retention, or to keep everything on your own infra, you’re often choosing between “do it their way” or “don’t do it.” By contrast, Collabora Online’s model is designed to sit inside your architecture. We are a software developer, not a cloud service – making bundling easy. We also offer 3 years’ LTS for each release [link to recent blog] so you upgrade when you’re ready, not when we say go.
All-in-one stacks bolt the kitchen to the ground. Collabora Online is different: if you want, we can even be a moveable food truck, we’ll cook documents from whichever fridge (EFSS) you prefer (or even multiple EFSS’s!). Running in stateless containers, means not only your files, but all your settings stay in the EFSS, so you can deploy wherever it makes sense – on-prem, your private cloud, multi-cloud, even air-gapped – without refitting your storage.

Keep Cooking When Clouds Go Cold

And that’s all before we start talking about the associated problems with vendor lock-in. Long story short – throwing all your eggs in one basket (especially a basket you rent and aren’t allowed to move) isn’t usually a good idea.

So what’s “missing” in an all-in-one world? Not missing features in the editor per se (although there’s plenty missing from Microsoft’s online editor) but rather missing options for how you deploy, store, and govern.

A 60-second WOPI explainer*** (no handshakes, promise)

Think of WOPI as a kitchen–fridge conversation:

Your EFSS (WOPI host) invites the editor with a short-lived token and a “please open this file” URL.
Collabora Online (WOPI client) opens the document, renders it, and when you edit, calls back to the EFSS’s endpoints to read/write.
Identity, permissions, and audit stay with the EFSS, the editor focuses on editing.

If your fridge speaks WOPI, our kitchen cooks.

What does this mean in practice? No download-save-reupload dance, no losing track of whether DocumentName_v003_FINAL_printthisone.docx is the one to email to your client. You click on a file in your EFSS, the file opens in the same browser window, while all the syncing magic happens behind the scenes.

*** This is hugely simplified, but hopefully you get the idea! Want more of the nuts and bolts later? Check out this post or have a look at our SDK.

Make Your Sysadmin Happy

Sysadmins get a simple life: our architecture scales beautifully, rolls through updates cleanly, and doesn’t hoard storage. We even have a kubernetes controller making 10,000+ user deployments easy to manage (because some people have really big kitchens!) Storage, identity, logging and retention stay where policy says they belong – inside the EFSS. And if you need long-term support, we publish multi-year LTS so you upgrade on your schedule, not because someone else’s roadmap says so.

A Solution that Works For You

Putting everything under one roof can feel tidy – but it also means your users have no choice. As an EFSS vendor, OEM’ing Collabora Online gives you a self-contained “kitchen” that slots cleanly into your platform, looks like your brand, and deploys anywhere (on-prem, your cloud, their cloud). You keep ownership of storage, identity, sharing, and roadmap, we bring the editor that users expect without dragging you into the years-long grind of office compatibility and performance engineering.

A partner that respects your business

EFSS looks simple on the surface, but it isn’t! Authentication, multi-tenant storage, replication, retention, legal holds, link policies – that’s a seriously full-time project. Office editing is its own craft too – and it’s the one we focus on. Rather than everyone building mediocre/buggy “all-in-one” solutions we are staying out of the EFSS market and make the best document editor we can. The result: a faster time-to-market, fewer moving parts to support, stateless containers that scale with your needs, multi-year LTS so upgrades fit your cadence, and a team that ships features your customers will love. All the while you keep control of the customer relationship and the business value you’ve already built.

Try it now

Give Collabora Online a go with our free trial. Or if you’re feeling technical, try pointing Collabora Online at your EFSS, open a file, and enjoy working!

The post Why the Best Online Office Doesn’t Try to Store Your Files appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

Collabora Productivity contributions in LibreOffice 26.2

Richard Brock — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:42:13 +0000

For over 12 years, Collabora Productivity has been privileged to work as one part of a broader community of enthusiastic developers, both volunteers and paid, collaborating to make an open source office suite that is free to download and trusted by millions of users.

The LibreOffice codebase is the foundation of Collabora Online, our enterprise, document-editing and online collaboration product – and as long-standing members of the community, we are excited to contribute to LibreOffice releases with 26.2 available today!

Our contributions

With the merger with allotropia software GmbH in May 2025, our commits to the codebase for 2025 (from January to the end of December), as per The Document Foundation’s State of the Project 2025, amounted to around 45% of the total commits from over 50 individuals. While Collabora Productivity is part of a global community of committers, we were fortunate enough to be able to contribute more than half of the documented features from the release notes for LibreOffice 26.2. In terms of total commits, this amounted to around 2,000, but, more importantly, fixed over 500 issues (including commits merged from 25.8 to 26.2.02). The chart shows the feature areas from the release notes where Collabora engineers contributed code.

Improvements in LibreOffice 26.2

It is fair to say this release focuses less on new features and instead offers many improvements to app performance and a smoother overall experience with LibreOffice. Collabora Productivity, together with peers in the community, have also worked diligently to improve interoperability and compatibility issues, and here are some of Collabora’s contribution highlights:

Writer: Auto Captions and Fixes

AutoCaptions – When you paste in an image, Writer auto-inserts a caption, as long as you check the box in Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > AutoCaptions.
Better handling of Floating Tables – Tables are better behaved! Previously, Writer prioritised keeping tables and headers together, which meant they could both slide onto the next page if there wasn’t enough space left on the page. Sometimes this disrupted document flow, creating a large gap on the previous page, but this is now fixed. Read how it was fixed on Miklos Vajna’s blog.
Better DOCX interoperability for Floating Tables – The handling of the Table Split feature has improved. Prior to 26.2, this would result in two floating tables inside one frame, which couldn’t be exported to DOCX.

Track Changes improved – You have greater choice when handling interdependent changes now, and can select the ‘layer’ to change in the Manage Changes, e.g., you can choose a format change that’s on top of a Delete or Insert change.

Calc: Supporting more features

BIFF12 support – The max limit for pasting from Excel to Calc has increased. Prior to 26.2, Calc could paste 65,536 rows. With the Biff12 file format (Excel 2007+) supported, users can paste 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns per sheet.
XmlMaps support – Users spotted that XLSX spreadsheets lost xmlMaps.xml when opened in Calc and saved as an XLSX file. With xmlMaps.xml support, users can create direct, structural links between cells and external XML data files, e.g., turning Calc into an interface for managing XML data.

Chart: Live Preview for Sidebar

Live Preview – It’s quicker to select colour schemes. When a user mouses over Chart data range colour palette entries, it shows a live preview in the active chart.

Performance: Boosts and Fixes

Calc – Lots of fixes, like faster scrolling on spreadsheets with many hidden columns, faster removal of duplicates, and Reject All in Track Changes was slow to complete, so that’s been optimised.
Graphics – Again, a lot more optimisation for many user cases, especially when exporting SVGs with bitmaps and importing certain SVGs (usually because of fills) and polygons (with tiled image fill) that were noticeably slow to render.
UI – for example, Go To Page / Slide / Sheet Dialogs are async now, which means the UI stays responsive when navigating large documents.

UI: New Context Menu option

Insert Hyperlink – Another new time-saver courtesy of the Context Menu, which works across all the core apps. This time, when you highlight text, and the Context Menu pops up automatically, you will find an ‘Inset Hyperlink’ as an option.

Filters: Improved Interoperability and Markdown

Markdown – Both Markdown export and import features are improved, and you can apply templates to imported Markdown, too, so your documents pick up the colour theme and formatting, for example.
Calc: Generic XML and JSON Tabular Mapping Support – Linkable tabular ranges are auto-mapped to sheets in Calc when opened now. A linkable range is a section of a document containing tabular records. When a document contains multiple linkable ranges, each range gets mapped to a single sheet.

There are many other commits from many people in LibreOffice 26.2, so while we are acknowledging the time and effort contributed by our engineering team here, we want to celebrate the collective contributions of everyone involved in the LibreOffice project.

“We are pleased that Collabora Productivity's business model of selling maintenance subscriptions has allowed us to contribute the majority of highlighted new features in this release cycle - alongside the community.”

—Michael Meeks, CEO of Collabora Productivity on LibreOffice 26.2

For a detailed document on Collabora Productivity’s contributions to LibreOffice 26.2 and the support we provide in areas such as crash-testing, security maintenance and interoperability, download the fact sheet (PDF).

We love to work in the open for the benefit of everyone and empower each user to control their documents!

If you’re new here, and you’re looking for a feature rich and compatible open source solution for editing and collaboration your users will love, try Collabora Online today!

The post Collabora Productivity contributions in LibreOffice 26.2 appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

A Faster Friendlier Collabora Online – Part III

Richard Brock — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:41:14 +0000

In Part I we introduced the big idea: ergonomics, power on demand with context-aware UI and progressive disclosure. In Part II we showed how real-world feedback shaped the work. This instalment shows more of the updates put into practice across everyday tasks: presenting, reviewing, number-crunching, and discoverability.

Less friction, more doing!

Intelligent Presentations

Follow the Presenter Slideshow

Follow the Presenter in Impress is a smarter way to run slides: everyone opens the deck on their own device, the presenter controls the flow, and all views stay in sync. The smart thing? Participants can jump back briefly if they missed something. A single click on Follow Presenter snaps them back to the current slide, no more “Can we all see slide 14?” needed. It’s more robust than screen sharing and perfect for classrooms, training, boardrooms, and hybrid meetings where people need flexibility without losing the thread (see the full blog post here[link]).

Reset Slide Layout

In another Impress win, we’ve added a Reset Layout button for those moments when a slide’s placeholders have drifted from the template. One click restores title, text boxes, and images to their default positions and sizes from the template – great after trying out something new but when you want thing back into their default positions. It’s a small feature that keeps slide decks consistent and tidy without manual nudging.

Intuitive Documents

Find every comment, in context

Reviewing long documents just got easier. In Writer, open the Review tab and click Comment – ‘Comments list’ to pop open the Navigation sidebar with its Comments section expanded. You’ll see the text of every comment in order, so you can skim threads at a glance and jump straight to any comment with a single click. No more hunting through pages or scrolling past highlights – pick a comment from the list, and the editor takes you right to its spot in the document.

In addition to this, comment cards have been updated to make editing comments simpler, and reviewing resolved comments quicker.

Styles List Drop Down

If you have many styles within a document, it’s now easier to view them all once even on smaller screens. Simply click on the small icon in the corner of the Styles tab to open a dropdown panel.

A Clearer Calc

Sheet View

The new Sheet View function allows users to apply filters, sort lists, and hide/show rows in a spreadsheet without disturbing anyone else’s view. You’ll be able to spin up a temporary personal sheet view during a meeting to focus on just your region or product line, while others keep track of the bigger picture, or even their own data in their own view. The underlying data never changes, teammates keep their own context, and reviews stop turning into “where did my data go?” moments!

Smart Dropdowns in Calc

Long dropdown lists now include an optional search field, making it much easier to find items without scrolling through large menus. This is especially useful in dialogs with many entries. The search field is added where it helps, and deliberately omitted when it would be confusing or redundant, ensuring a cleaner and more consistent user experience.

Tab List

We all have that one spreadsheet with far too many sheet tabs at the bottom. This quick fix lists all your tabs in a simple drop-down (drop-up?) tab list to make finding the right tab quicker and simpler!

Borders in One Place

The Cell Border widget in the Home tab has grown up.
Every preset now has a clear label (e.g. No Borders, Left Border, Top and Bottom Border, Outer Border…). Additionally you can now set Line Colour and Line Style directly from within the widget. All part of our effort to help with discoverability and reduce menu diving.
If menu diving is your thing though, click More… at the bottom of the Cell Border dropdown to quickly open the full Format Cells – Borders dialog for maximum control.

Print the Grid (or don’t!)

A new Print Grid toggle in the Layout tab lets you decide whether the sheet’s gridlines appear on paper/PDF. Handy for quick handouts or polished exports!

Cursors that Explain Themselves

Small change, big clarity: in Calc the pointer adapts to highlight the possible operations in more contexts – for example:
Column headers (A, B, C…) show an up/down arrow on hover.
Row headers (1, 2, 3…) show a left/right arrow on hover.
Additionally a heavy plus is now the default selection cursor, making targeting cells and ranges feel more deliberate.

Smart toolbars on mobile

On mobile devices with limited screen height, toolbars automatically hide to maximise the space available for editing content. This improves usability when the on-screen keyboard is visible, preventing situations where the keyboard/toolbars take up all of the screen and leave little or no room for the document itself.

Discoverability that teaches: shortcut hints on hover

For all apps, tooltips now show the keyboard shortcut next to the action name wherever one exists. Hover over ‘Paste’ and you’ll see Paste (Ctrl+V); hover Justify and you’ll see Justified (Ctrl+J). It’s a small cue that pays off twice: instant speed for power users, and gentle coaching for everyone else.

Instant clarity - Read-only tab

When a document is opened in read-only mode, Collabora Online shows a small but bright Read-only tab in the top-right corner. It’s intentionally unobtrusive but crystal-clear, so people immediately understand why they can’t edit instead of wondering if something’s broken. With a simple drop down beside the tab, it’s easy to switch between read-only and editing modes.

That’s it for Part III – a set of purposeful upgrades aimed at reducing friction across the board: presenting, editing, and number-crunching. If you present, try out our new Follow the Presenter feature. If you edit, the Comments list cuts the scroll. If you live in Calc, clearer cursors, a tidy tab list, and smarter borders help you move faster. And across the suite, shortcut hints teach as you work.

If you’re integrating Collabora Online, tell us what should come next – we’re shipping changes because you asked for them!
If you want to see the new changes, try it out here:

Missed the earlier parts? Start with Part I for the design principles and Part II for how we measured what to fix first.

The post A Faster Friendlier Collabora Online – Part III appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

From Online to Desktop, Berlin to Bangkok – Here is how your support made a difference

Richard Brock — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 11:51:38 +0000

“As we come to the end of another extraordinary year, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our customers, partners, community and of course the awesome team at Collabora Productivity.

“We’re focused on making Open Source rock by creating beautiful, intuitive tools that work online and off, and keep you firmly in control. We love to work alongside a vibrant global community that believes productivity should be open, secure, and designed for users. We are most grateful to our partners and customers who ultimately fund every document we liberate and line of code we write – thank you!”

Michael Meeks
Collabora Productivity CEO

And what a year it’s been! We’ve shipped some of our most ambitious projects yet – from a beautiful new user interface refresh, to a brand-new desktop suite. We’ve grown in reach, thanks to partnerships with French ministries offering Collabora Online to 1,000,000+ teachers, or German states choosing open, sovereign productivity solutions they control and can trust, and it was the year we reached the end of support for Collabora Online 22.05, showing the strength of our LTS offering.

So let’s dive in and take a look at what your support made possible, starting with the headline release of the year: Collabora Online 25.04.

COOL 25.04

Collabora Online 25.04 was our biggest step forward in usability, performance and document rendering in years. This release wasn’t just about adding features – it was about making everyday work smoother, faster, and more intuitive for millions of users. Just a few highlights include:

Smoother, more polished editing

One of the less visible improvements was the work on performance. With updates such as viewport-based preloading aiming for a 60fps smooth editing experience, documents now feel noticeably more responsive. Scrolling and typing are snappier, zooming more fluid, and larger documents load with far less waiting around. A huge quality-of-life win.

Smarter writing tools: Autotext & Custom Dictionaries

Writer gained powerful new productivity helpers this year.

Autotext speeds up repetitive writing and helps teams standardise phrasing, while Custom Dictionaries make it easy to ensure technical terms, product names, or organisational jargon are treated correctly. Small features, big dividends for anyone who works with words all day.

Combined with central management capabilities, these are serious features for organisations big and small looking to level up their language use and consistency.

Clearer, easier collaboration with improved comments

Commenting saw significant enhancements too. Updates across the UI make discussions smoother, more reliable, and easier to follow – especially important in documents with multiple collaborators. These improvements continue our ongoing effort to make collaborative editing as simple as possible.

Modern PDF support and digital signing

The introduction of PDF 2.0 compatibility and built-in digital signatures thanks to an integration with eID Easy brought a major boost to organisations with modern document-signing needs. Users can now create, read and sign modern PDFs directly within Collabora Online – no more need to share your sensitive documents with 3rd party document signing companies.

A Presenter Console built for impressive presentations

Impress gained a fully-featured Presenter Console, giving speakers everything they need: upcoming slides, timers, notes, and navigation tools. Whether in the boardroom, classroom, or conference hall, Collabora Online now offers a far more complete presentation experience.

Improved Interoperability - The work that never stops

Alongside the headline features, COOL 25.04 continued our constant, meticulous work on interoperability. Hundreds of small fixes and refinements across Writer, Calc, and Impress to make sure documents open cleanly and behave as users expect – whether they are edited in our software, or shared with collaborators in a different editing environment.

COOL Days 2025 — A Bridge-Building Blast in Budapest

June brought the Collabora Online community back together for COOL Days 2025 in Budapest, where contributors, partners, developers and community members gathered for three days of talks, workshops, demos, fun and hacking.

The programme mixed technical deep dives with hands-on hacking time as well as some fun excursions around Budapest, allowing contributors, partners and engineers to all enjoy the time together. From sharing new features and performance improvements, debugging tricky issues or sharing feedback on roadmap directions, the in-person conversations and shared sessions proved invaluable.

If you couldn’t join us, you’ll find the full write-up, photos, and talks on our blog here. And we’re already looking forward to welcoming you to COOL Days 2026 in Hamburg!

Major UI/UX Refresh

This year we delivered our biggest UI/UX refresh yet. The simple aim was to use the data we’ve gathered to reduce friction, make powerful features more discoverable, and let users move faster with less training. Some of the updates include:

Context-aware design: controls when and where you need them

Selecting text now triggers a compact, contextual toolbar right next to your cursor – so common formatting tools (bold, italic, font, colour, etc.) are instantly available without hunting through menus.

Smart tabs

Instead of overwhelming toolbars, we introduced contextual tabs – for example, auto-switching to the Table tab when you’re editing a table, or the Picture tab when an image is selected.
This keeps the UI cleaner, less intimidating, and more relevant to the task at hand.

Cleaner layout, responsive toolbars, better discoverability

The UI now adapts gracefully to different window sizes: controls re-flow, related functions group when space is tight, and horizontal scrollbars are eliminated – giving a smooth, consistent experience, and improving function discoverability whether you’re on a compact screen or a large monitor.
We also improved iconography, and added more graphics for commonly used layout settings so all users can find the settings they need

Data-driven design – built from real usage patterns

This overhaul wasn’t guesswork. Behind the scenes, we collected feedback from customers, partners, community, and internal usage data: more than 1,000,000 data points from real editing sessions. The result? A UI shaped around how people actually work, balancing simplicity, power, and flexibility.

New Collabora Office

One of the most exciting moments of the year came right at the end: the launch of the new Collabora Office our desktop suite bringing Collabora Online to the desktop. For the first time, users can enjoy a genuinely consistent UI and feature experience across browser and desktop – the same fast engine, the same collaboration-ready foundations, the same modern UX direction – all wrapped in a beautifully polished native app.

Whilst only an initial release, we are looking forward to further integrating and supporting both worlds in 2026. Organisations can run Collabora Online in the browser, offering the desktop app for local work, and enjoy the same feature set, file handling and behaviour across platforms. This will dramatically reduce training overheads for Collabora Online users, will simplify deployments, and opens the door to a more unified future for productivity.

The new suite is already elegant and secure, but as we iron out the initial early-release hiccups, we’re exited for future development and deeper convergence in the years ahead.

If you haven’t read the full announcement yet, we highly recommend it – it’s one of the biggest steps we’ve taken in making open productivity seamless across every device.

Community

Collabora’s mission to “Make Open Source Rock” continues to thrive thanks to our incredible and diverse community. Every bug you reported, every string you translated, every patch you submitted and every insight you shared has helped make Collabora Online better for millions of users around the world. Thank you for being such a wonderful force behind our progress.

This year our community grew stronger than ever. We welcomed over 100 new contributors across code, translations and documentation. From first–time patch authors to long-time translators, you all reflect the healthy, global momentum of the project. We resolved 251 community-reported issues on github so far this year, showing how active collaboration continues to shape the roadmap. We also created 85 new Easy Hacks, and with 72 still open, there are plenty of approachable ways for newcomers to get involved.

Our translation community was equally impressive in 2025, reaching 92 supported languages, with more than 100 translators who completed 88,683 translated strings and nearly one million translated words. Two new languages joined this year as well, expanding accessibility for even more users.

Engineering

This year our engineering team delivered quality improvements across performance, usability and new features. With 4,486 commits merged into the master branch, 368 more than last year, and more than 300 customer tickets resolved, Collabora Online is evolving faster than ever.

Performance improvements also paid off. From the document parsing, caching and rendering improvements in the 25.04 release, we estimate to have dropped 2-3 seconds from document load times since 2024. For the same 500-user organisations, that might have shaved off 600-900 hours of document-loading time, or approximately 100 working days.

In our crash testing, this year in partnership with Adfinis, we supervised the loading of more than 30,000,000 test documents, resaving to different formats and checking for errors. In addition we maintained a huge number of code fuzzing tests, as of early December this was 2,798,607,405,444.

As well as crash testing, our thorough file-format-interoperability testing (which checks for errors when converting the ~250,000 problematic documents we keep on record) ran through more than 4,000,000 tests this year, with resulting interop improvements resolving in excess of 10,000 reported issues. In just two impactful updates of our XLS to XLSX conversion filter for example, over 13,000 previously misbehaving documents were fixed.

Combined with the refreshed UI/UX, performance and accessibility upgrades, and major new features in the 25.04 release, this year we took our engineering excellence to the next level.

Conferences

But not only fast-paced development, 2025 was a year of planes, trains and presentation clickers – with the team attending 25 conferences around the world. From the romantic streets of Paris, to bustling Tokyo, to busy, colourful Bangkok, we were thrilled to meet our partners, customers, developers and open-source enthusiasts wherever they were gathering.

We kicked off the year at the Univention Summit and FOSDEM, before heading into a spring packed with community events, cloud summits and developer meetups. Summer brought our own COOL Days in Budapest, shortly followed by the LibreOffice Conference also in Budapest, which our colleague Gábor Kelemen led the organisation of, helped by a team from Collabora Productivity and members of the local community.

Autumn carried the momentum through Copenhagen and The Hague, before a snowstorm of events in December. Wherever we travelled, the message was the same: organisations everywhere are looking for beautiful, smart, secure, sovereign office solutions – and they’re genuinely excited to discover what Collabora Online can offer.

We hope to see you at one of next year’s events – and especially at COOL Days 2026 in Hamburg!

Marketing Stats

2025 was also a big year for marketing and outreach, with our blogs, videos, social media and press activity reaching a wider audience than ever. We also launched French, German and Spanish translations of our website to help even more organisations learn about open, secure, sovereign document editing. Here are some of the highlights:

2025 saw us kick off a new #FeatureFriday video series, to introduce new features of Collabora Online. One of the more popular videos in the series featured some of the collaborative features in Collabora Online: Collaboration Features in Collabora Online #FeatureFriday.

2025 also saw our new Open Matters podcast introduced, exploring open source news and topics. Why not have a listen here to our December episode exploring some of the history, struggles and progress of open source projects in Denmark: Open Source for Citizens: Denmark’s Bold Experiment.

Press coverage grew dramatically in 2025, with 178 articles and blog posts published by year’s end — up sharply from 59 mentions in 2024 — reflecting both increased momentum and rising recognition of Collabora Productivity’s role in open, sovereign digital infrastructure. November, marked by the launch of Collabora Office, was a particular highlight: in just one week, the announcement generated 36 articles, including coverage from Heise, MSN and ZDNet (which was localised and syndicated across multiple countries with a recently updated title “Not enough people are talking about this free Microsoft Office alternative”) Overall sentiment was strongly positive at 87%, and we expect coverage to continue growing as further updates land.

This year we also hosted a number of webinars outlining our product lineup, new features, integrations with our partners, and of course the new Collabora Office.

Speaking of which, our new Collabora Office release blog attracted some serious attention in November, you can read more about that here.

And finally, our new comic, “The Open Road to Freedom” (or TORF for short), took a more light-hearted look at the world of FLOSS software communities.

New Integrations, Partners & Team

2025 saw growth not just in users and deployments, but in people, partnerships and the wider ecosystem around Collabora Online.

Our team grew by 24 new colleagues, including 13 former allotropia team members and 4 interns, strengthening our engineering, design and community efforts. Behind those hires sat a remarkable level of interest: 3,669 applications, 73 interviews, and a recruitment pipeline driven largely by the open-source community itself – 36% via community channels. A clear sign that people want to work on open, meaningful technology, many thanks to all who applied even if we couldn’t host everyone (yet).

At the same time, our ecosystem continued to expand. We welcomed 34 new partners this year, including more than 15 OEMs and deep integrations, spanning hosting providers, collaboration platforms, consultancies and sovereign cloud offerings across Europe and beyond.

We also saw a broadening integration landscape, with new and ongoing work around WordPress, Odoo, Imixs and Plone (only Odoo and WordPress are supported by us currently), making it easier than ever to use Collabora Online wherever documents are created and shared.

Collabora Productivity is growing, and so is the opportunity to be part of it! If you’re looking to integrate, partner, or deploy, there’s never been a better time to get involved.

Thank you for joining us on this whirlwind tour of 2025! It has been a year of big releases, bold UI changes, deep technical improvements, and major wins for open standards and digital freedom around the world. Thank you again to our customers, partners, community contributors, testers, translators, and everyone who helps push Collabora Office and Collabora Online forward.

If you want to stay connected or get more involved, here are a few easy ways to dive in:

Try CODE and experiment with the very latest Collabora Online features
Download the new Collabora Office desktop and see just how far it’s come
Join the community forum, and maybe try out some easy hacks!
Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates
Follow us on social media for releases, deep dives, and behind-the-scenes posts
Reach out to sales if you’d like to integrate Collabora Online or join our partner ecosystem

We’re excited for everything 2026 will bring – and we can’t wait to keep building an open, secure, user-focused future together.

But for now, from all of us at Collabora Productivity marketing,

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year!

The post From Online to Desktop, Berlin to Bangkok – Here is how your support made a difference appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

A Friendlier, Faster Collabora Online – Part II

Richard Brock — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 11:08:34 +0000

1,000,000 Data Points for an Update?

Check out Part I here

TL;DR
In response to user feedback, we’ve made the Collabora Online interface more discoverable and learnable, with extra power on tap: context-aware menus, progressive disclosure, responsive toolbars, presenter controls, and clearer icons, so your team can move faster with less training.

How we did this

This refresh is about one thing: removing friction so more users can get more done.

We didn’t guess. We listened and we measured. Over the past months we’ve gathered feedback from customers, partners and the community, watched real users work, and added light-touch UI event logging on internal systems to understand where people slow down, and provide us with a clearer understanding of how editors act inside a document. We then redesigned around those findings.

Some Analytic Takeaways

People prefer controls in context, rather than hunting through tabs.
Power users still need depth, but not all at once – hence progressive disclosure.
Responsive grouping beats scrolling for narrow windows.
Clear icons and shortcuts reduce hesitation and speed up repeat tasks.
A unified Navigation sidebar (find/replace & outline) helps everyone.

Above: Example snapshot of data from several editing sessions

Round 2: Highlights

Quick access to standard settings

It’s important that your document editor has advanced editing settings and granular controls, but sometimes you just want some simple default settings to choose from.

We’re adding standardised examples into our user interface to make the most frequently used settings quick to change, as well as providing simple graphics to make sure they can be understood at a glance.

Present with confidence: in‑slideshow controls

While presenting in Impress, you now have simple in‑slideshow buttons to go forward and back. This allows users to use a keyboard or mouse to navigate.

Another feature unique amongst office suites is the ability to toggle off all transitions on the fly without modifying your document. This change was made as a direct result of feedback sessions with some users who were in some situations forced to disable transitions from existing slideshows one slide at a time and save as a duplicate file.

Just a couple of little, reliable controls that help talks run smoothly.

Truly responsive layout: goodbye horizontal scrollbars

Whether you’re on a narrow split‑screen or a big external monitor, the interface reflows intelligently. As the window narrows, related controls group together and are accessible via compact dropdowns, rather than forcing horizontal scrolling. It’s the same power, just right‑sized for your screen.

We’ve also made the Character and Paragraph formatting dialogs easier to reach directly from the toolbar – great if you like things at the top, and prefer not to open the sidebar.

The visual grouping of functions into categories such as ‘Clipboard’, ‘Font’, ‘Paragraph’ and others also helps users identify related functions, and intuitively learn new or more advanced features.

Icons everywhere for instant recognition

Menus and context menus now include clear icons alongside actions – from Copy and Paste to Insert sheet, Insert or Delete rows/columns. Visual cues reduce hesitation and help newer users build muscle memory quickly. Additionally our hover tooltips now all display keyboard shortcuts where available to speed things up in the future.

Navigation sidebar: find more, faster

Press Ctrl + F and the Navigation panel opens at the side, listing all results. You’ll also see matches reflected in your document outline (headings). We’ve removed the old status‑bar search to keep the bottom toolbar tidy, and Find & Replace is now the default flow.

Quality‑of‑life touches

Add rows in tables from the sides or bottom – right click + insert still works, as does the new table tab, but why not make things easier?!
You’ll also notice subtle highlighting and cursor changes that reflect the active tab, so it’s obvious what mode you’re in.
- More native cursors are on our shortlist of things to do – watch this space!

Ready to see it in action?

Round 3 of changes is on the way soon, or you can check out round 1 here, but we hope this gives you a taster of some of the hard work that’s already in Collabora Online!

If you haven’t yet, upgrade to enjoy our beautiful new UI! Or if you’re new here, and you’re looking for a familiar, friendly and powerful platform your users will love, try Collabora Online today. We’re fully open source, integrate-able, extensible, and would love to help you and your users free your documents!

The post A Friendlier, Faster Collabora Online – Part II appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.

A Friendlier, Faster Collabora Online – Part I

Richard Brock — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 08:42:08 +0000

Our Biggest UI/UX Refresh Yet

Check out Part II here

TL;DR
We’re shipping some serious UI/UX improvements designed to feel intuitive, reduce menu-diving, and help you move faster. Think contextual toolbars, smart tabs that appear exactly when you need them, responsive layouts that adapt to any window size, presenter controls, and clearer iconography across the board.

Why we did this

This refresh is about one thing: removing friction so more users can get more done.

We’ve listened to a lot of feedback – through our partners, customers, community channels, forums, even conference floor chats, and now we’ve acted on what you asked for.

Our approach is simple – make Collabora Online easy to use from the first click. We want users to have immediate access to the powerful editing tools they want, without turning the user interface into an airplane cockpit. That means context-aware controls that appear when they’re relevant, and progressive disclosure so advanced options are there when you need them, not when you don’t. This is only the first part of our UI/UX refresh, and the screenshots and features below show you how this it’s taking shape.

Round 1: Highlights

Stop menu diving: on‑selection formatting popup

When you select text, a compact, contextual popup appears right next to your cursor with the actions you most often need — bold, italic, underline, font family/size, colour, and more. No trek to the tab menu or right‑click required. It’s faster, it’s closer, and it fades away when you’re done or move somewhere else.

Available in: Writer and Impress (we’ve intentionally left this out of Calc for now — spreadsheets get noisy fast!)

Extensible: Are you an integrator? We’d love for you to add your own actions to the bar — e.g. an integration assistant button. Get in contact with us for help with this!

Tabs that appear when the task requires

We’ve introduced contextual tabs that only appear as you interact with content. This provides relevant functionality for the user at the right moment, and clear the space on the toolbar when you don’t. Examples include:

Calc – Sparklines tab: edit and format in‑cell trendlines on the spot, with this context-aware automatic tab. No menu diving, less right clicking!
Writer – Table tab: view all the table specific functions, like inserting new rows/columns, splitting cells, protecting cells, number formatting, and much more, only when a table is active.
Picture tab (all apps): when you select an image, adjust brightness, contrast, image mode, effects, transparency and more in one place.
Shape tab (all apps): style fills, outlines, and effects for shapes and diagrams.

Extra power in your tabs

In addition to the contextual tabs that appear when interacting with particular elements, we’ve also introduced new permanent tabs with functions more frequently needed.

Impress

Transition tab: set slide transitions and timings from the new instant-access top menu. These settings were previously accessibly from the side bar, but have now been unified into a menu bar simplifying user workflows.
Slide Show: all the presentation options together in one place. Start from your current slide or the beginning, full-screen or in a tab with ‘Present in Window’, and hide/show slides with a quick Hide Slide toggle.
Design: A single, easy to find, place to change the look-and-feel of your slides. From changing slide template to colour theme: the new Design tab makes it faster to customize your presentations.

Writer

Layout tab: Change margins, page size, orientation, columns, watermarks, numbering settings in this smartly laid out tab.

Calc

Formulae tab: easily find the formulas you want, and discover new tools quickly with a clearly laid out Function Library in the new Formulae tab. Additionally, the Named Ranges tools find a new home in this tab.

Ready to see it in action?

We’re already working on round 2 of changes, but we hope this gives you a taster of some of the hard work that’s already in Collabora Online!

The post A Friendlier, Faster Collabora Online – Part I appeared first on Collabora Online and Collabora Office.