ONLYOFFICE + ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors make for a great in-house cloud-based document system

Jack Wallen has tested the waters of many on-prem tools and one that he keeps coming back to is ONLYOFFICE. Find out how to connect the Desktop Editors to an ONLYOFFICE server.

I have seen the light … or at least a dim ray of inspiration at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. That light comes by way of ONLYOFFICE. You see, I’m always looking for outstanding solutions for problems that shouldn’t exist. One such problem is creating an in-house, cloud-based document system that doesn’t require the deployment of a platform that tries to do too much. That’s one of the main reasons I was drawn to the ONLYOFFICE document server.

SEE: iCloud vs. OneDrive: Which is best for Mac, iPad and iPhone users? (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Now that ONLYOFFICE can be easily deployed with Docker (find out how in How to deploy the ONLYOFFICE Workspace Community Edition on Ubuntu Server 20.04), I decided to see how easy it would be to create an in-house system I can use to manage documents outside of my usual Google Docs. After all, the idea of keeping more sensitive documentation on a third-party host doesn’t exactly fit within the best-laid plans of mice and men.

With that in mind, I decided to test drive the combination of ONLYOFFICE and the ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors. Much to my surprise, I found the setup to be quite effective.

Let me show you how I pulled this off (it’s much easier than you think).

What you’ll need

First off, you must have deployed the ONLYOFFICE Workspace Community Edition up and running. You’ll also need a desktop or laptop PC (Linux, macOS, or Windows) to install the Desktop Editors on. I’ll be demonstrating on Pop!_OS Linux, so if your operating system of choice is different, you’ll need to alter the installation process to suit your platform.

How to install the Desktop Editors

The first thing we’ll do is install the Desktop Editors. Download the installer file for your operating system from the ONLYOFFICE download page. For a Ubuntu-based operating system, you’ll download the .deb file. Save that file to your Downloads directory.

After the file has been downloaded, open a terminal window and install the package with the command:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb

Should that installation error out, fix it with:

sudo apt-get install -f

That should finish up the installation.

How to connect to the ONLYOFFICE server

Open the ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors from your desktop menu. When the window opens (Figure A), you’ll be greeted by the Welcome information.

Figure A

Click Connect Now, under Create an ONLYOFFICE cloud. In the resulting popup (Figure B), select ONLYOFFICE from the drop-down and type the IP address or domain of your ONLYOFFICE Community Edition server.

Figure B

Click Connect Now and you’ll then be prompted for your ONLYOFFICE Community Edition server username and password (Figure C).

Figure C

Once you’ve typed the email address and password associated with your ONLYOFFICE account, click Sign In and you should then find yourself on the main Desktop Editors window (Figure D), connected to your account on the server.

Figure D

Congratulations, you’ve just connected the ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors to your own locally-hosted server. I’ve found this setup to be far more efficient than, say, using ONLYOFFICE in Nextcloud. One of the main reasons is that the Desktop Editors/Server connection is so much faster than ONLYOFFICE within Nextcloud. And if you’re looking for a solution that doesn’t overwhelm you with features, this is a great place to start.

The ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors make working with and collaborating on documents an absolute breeze. Give this a go and see if it doesn’t wind up being your in-house document solution of choice.

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