I have some custom work that needs to be done for my nextcloud website. Who here has experience developing for nextcloud and is willing to do some customization work for me?
What kind of custom work / customization?
I want office files to be viewable within users their browsers. I don’t want collabora because that costs a lot and besides there’s no point in a platform like collabora because I don’t need an editor, but just a viewer.
Hi alerix,
if the files has to be only readable, you may store them as PDF file, so the users can read them in the browser out of the box.
Hope, it is helpful.
Hello thanks for your response. This is indeed also an option but what if the users need to download the file? I reckon they would want it in the original format so they can work on it. But if its stored in PDF they won’t have that right? Or is it possible to view it in PDF and download it as the original file as well? If so, can you give me a walkthrough of how I can configure this to achieve it?
Hello alerix,
it’s depending, which office they use. Since MS-Office 2013 and up it is possible to open a PDF and work with it. With LibreOffice they can open the PDF with LibreOffice Draw, but to work with it is not so comfortable.
Another suggest is to store the files in both formats, so the users can choose: To see the PDF and load it down, if they want, or if they preferable want to work on it, they may download the DOC, DOCX or what ever format you saved, and it’s okay. even though in this case you need more place on your hard drive.
Hope it helps a bit further.
Would you be willing to do configure this solution for me? I would pay you for your time of course as long as I get this job done well.
Can deploy the free version of either Collabora or OnlyOffice, and the latter can be tweaked to be view only if need be.
Hi alerix,
in your second article you wrote, that you don’t want/need collabora etc., because you don’t need an editor, just a viewer.
In your third article you came up with: your users may want to download the original office version to work on it.
I suggested to store both versions, DOC etc. (office version) AND PDF. For me the easiest way to satisfy the users. In this case your users may decide, what they want: Watch the PDF file only or download it, download the office version and work on it. Download for users is no problem, in case you gave the rights to them in nextcloud.
That’s all you have to do. Everything after the upload of the files your users want to do with is up to them … including their software possibilities for example edit an PDF with their software.
Sorry, perhaps I don’t see your target, but I see no need to configure something other special to deal with files within nextcloud (excluding to setup a Collabora or an Onlyoffice server). Perhaps here is someone else to help you in a better way.