Office Integrations

Shutdown of OnlyOffice at the end of February 2026

At the end of February 2026, our licences for OnlyOffice will expire. There are no plans for renewal, but we will then have technical support for Collabora.

Barring any technical reasons to the contrary, we will continue to offer OnlyOffice until the last day and may postpone larger updates for this reason.

Office Integrations

In sciebo we currently offer two Office integrations:

• Collabora for .ods, .odt, .odp, .odg
• OnlyOffice for .xlsx, .docx, .pptx

For OnlyOffice we have only a limited number of licenses, so especially during peak times (around 11 am) it may happen that not all users can use OnlyOffice. In this case you have to wait a bit.

Since the upgrade to Nextcloud 30 the default document editor is Collabora. This is set by the Nextcloud manufacturer. The product is not yet fully mature. In particular, with MS‑Office formats problems can occur. You can then switch to OnlyOffice via the three‑dot menu (Open with OnlyOffice), provided licenses are still available.

Screenreader with Collabora

To use a screenreader with Collabora, you have to enable it in the web interface. In the collabora interface, under the tab “help”, you have to activate the button “Voice Over”. In non-English locales this might be translated too literally, e.g. in German “Stimme Über”.

Known Issues and Limitations

OnlyOffice with Federated Shares disrupted

Currently there is a disruption to the use of OnlyOffice with federated shares. The manufacturer has now identified and resolved the cause. We are expected to receive an update shortly, which we will then distribute promptly.

Federated shares in Nextcloud Office sometimes work, sometimes do not

The issue is that a file received via federated share cannot be opened with Collabora/Nextcloud Office. This does not happen with every federated share. A share that works will continue to work, while a share that does not work cannot be repaired without further ado.

We have identified a bug here and informed the manufacturer. Strictly speaking, we do not yet have support for this, and it is just before Christmas, but we hope that Nextcloud can improve this promptly.

As a workaround, files can be shared via a password-protected link or by email in the meantime.

Collaborative work is only possible with Collabora or OnlyOffice!

Colabora (Nextcloud Office) and OnlyOffice run on two different systems from different vendors. These two systems will not be able to communicate with each other in the foreseeable future, as the vendors have not provided for this functionality. This means that, when collaborating, team members must agree beforehand whether a document should be edited collaboratively with one editor or the other. Otherwise, data loss is unavoidable. Last one to write, wins.

Mobile Clients only open OnlyOffice

This is a bug. In particular for people who rely on screenreaders, until we disable OnlyOffice end of February 2026, we recommend either using a desktop or laptop to open files, or if you have a different application for office files, download the files to your mobile device and then use said application.