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ZDNET key takeaways
- Collabora has released a desktop version of its office suite.
- Collabora Office is based on LibreOffice.
- For now, the app is available for free for Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
Ah, the office suite. Once upon a time, it was one of the first pieces of software installed on an operating system (if the OS didn’t include one by default). The most widely used office suite has been Microsoft Office for years.
MS Office still exists (in both locally installed and cloud versions) and is still used everywhere. However, with the injection of AI, some people are souring on Microsoft’s office suite.
If you want a locally installed office suite that doesn’t force AI down your throat, you have options. Recently, another option has been released, and it’s pretty exciting: Collabora Office.
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If you’ve ever heard of Collabora, then you may have used its online office suite, which can be self-hosted or used via cloud services. Collabora has been around for some time, but has only recently created a locally installed version of its well-regarded office suite.
Collabora Office is based on LibreOffice, so you know it has plenty to offer. However, if you’ve never been a fan of the LibreOffice UI, you’re in for a treat, as Collabora has made some dramatic changes to how you interact with LibreOffice.
Think LibreOffice with an MS Office UI.
What does Collabora include?
Collabora Office includes the three apps you need as well as a bonus: Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw. Like LibreOffice, the three main apps (Writer, Calc, Impress) make collaborating with those who use MS Office simple. It supports the default MS Office file formats as well as many others.
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Collabora uses a tab-based UI, so accessing the features you need is well organized. In fact, if you’ve used the MS Office ribbon interface, you’ll feel perfectly at home here. Along with the ribbon UI, you get tabbed menus and familiar toolbars to make this app instantly familiar and easy to use.
Collabora features
Collabora offers plenty of features, but the two most important are that you get a unified experience across all the desktop platforms (Linux, MacOS, and Windows) and effortless collaboration with other office suites.
Collabora is even capable of opening Apple Pages documents (in read-only mode). I tested this by opening the latest draft of my most recent novel, and Collabora didn’t so much as blink at opening the file. It would have been nice to be able to work with it, but finding an office suite that is 100% compatible with Apple Pages documents is no easy feat.
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Collabora also includes review features (spelling, thesaurus, language selection, comments, track changes, and more), form options to add into your documents (such as check boxes and drop-downs), and just about every feature you’ve grown accustomed to.
The one thing Collabora doesn’t have is AI. If you don’t like the idea of some third-party service training its LLMs on your work, you don’t have to worry about that with Collabora. Hopefully, the office suite will remain AI-free for the foreseeable future.
My experience with Collabora
I did a bit of testing with Collabora and found it to be every bit the equal of LibreOffice. Of course, I approached this testing with the idea that this is a first official release, so it might not be quite as polished as those suites that have been around for years.
For example, I noticed (at least on the Linux version) that scrolling through documents (no matter the size) was a bit laggy.
With LibreOffice and other established apps, scrolling through documents was fast and effortless. With Collabora, the scrolling felt sluggish. That was on Linux. On MacOS, I didn’t have that issue with scrolling. In fact, on MacOS Tahoe, I could move around documents as quickly as I could with Apple Pages.
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There was one oddity on MacOS. Even though Collabora Office was able to open Pages documents in read-only mode on Linux, it wasn’t even able to open them on MacOS.
I was also able to open MS Office documents (.docx) without a single issue. That alone could be a reason to believe in Collabora Office.
Another issue I had was that Collabora Office simply would not open on Pop!_OS with the COSMIC desktop. To be fair to Collabora, COSMIC is still in beta, so this came as no surprise. On the other hand, Collabora Office ran smoothly on GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, Budgie, and Xfce.
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One thing to keep in mind is that this release of the Collabora Desktop app is still in the early stages, so it’s not quite fully featured. For example, there is no Settings option to be found anywhere. This will be added in later builds, so just don’t install this first release and expect to be able to customize it to your liking.
My conclusion
Some might think another desktop office suite is pointless. I would disagree with that sentiment. The way I see it is that with Collabora Desktop now available, suites like LibreOffice will be inspired to develop and improve the current features, create new features, and become an even better tool for collaboration.
Competition helps prevent stagnation, and that’s good for everyone.
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I honestly don’t know if I’ll be using Collabora Office regularly, but if this first release is any indication of how good this tool can be, I might very well change my mind sooner, rather than later.
Well done Collabora. You have a bright future ahead of you.