NC23: How to enable Nextcloud Office

I am clueless here too. I had NC 22 with a Collabora CODE server. I upgraded to NC 23 and now Iā€™m still using my Collabora CODE server. So I disable Collabora and try again and office files then produce a download option only. Enabled collabora again and weā€™re fine. But what is Nextcloud Office and how does one make use of it? Touted in all the release marketing yet mysteriously absent.

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Running into the same issue on my setup after upgrading to Nextcloud 23.

The Collabora Online and Built-in CODE server apps are installed, but I canā€™t open any Office documents. Clicking on them just downloads the file and thereā€™s no option to open anything in Office.

Looked in the server logs but there doesnā€™t seem to be anything related. Iā€™m on NGINX 1.21.4 and PHP 8.0.13 if that helps.

According to the Nextcloud Office pane the server is reachable:
image

Collabora was working great on 22.2.3.

Nextcloud Office consists of two parts. The first part is the actual Collabora Office server (backend). This can either be the built-in Collabora server or a separate Collabora server that can be installed e.g. via Docker. The second part is the Collabora Online app (frontend) to which they now refer as Nextcloud Office. This app actually integrates the server backend into Nextcloud and provides the new re-themed and redesigned UI.

Unfortunatly the Built-In Collabora server is still not ready for Nextcloud 23. You have to wait for an upgrade of the app or use an external Collabora server e.g. via Docker for now. See hereā€¦ https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/richdocumentscode

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I downloaded the documentserver_community-master and unzipped it to the /nextcloud/apps directory, changed the permissions and enabled the Community Document Server in the App Store

The Problem is that the richdocumentscode is too old with NC23.
You can download richdocuments version 5.0 from here:
wget https://github.com/nextcloud-releases/richdocuments/releases/download/v5.0.0/richdocuments.tar.gz

Then you have version 5.0
But Richdocumentscode is still version 6.4.1303
This verson is only supported for NC22:
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/richdocumentscode

So I have no idea why my prod NC22 was shown NC23 for upgrade as stable when important apps are not available yet.

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Hereā€™s a guide to get it working - PSA: How to get collabora working on nextcloud 23!

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Works on an upgraded NC too.

Follow the steps in the post from @Paradox551 - after a reboot of my server everything is fine ā€¦

Thanks

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To be honest - after the performance issues with 22.2.1 and now this not working upgrade - maybe its better to reduce the interval of new releases and better spend more time to test it.

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For everyone that doesnā€™t want to bother with ā€œbrokenā€ updates anymore: you should give GitHub - nextcloud/all-in-one: Nextcloud AIO stands for Nextcloud All In One and provides easy deployment and maintenance with most features included in this one Nextcloud instance. a try :wink:

Unfortunately it was only advertising. Office for the Nextcloud works the same as before. Either with the Collabora Docker. Or with the Collabora Online - Built-in CODE Server. This app for the Collabora built in code server is probably not working at the moment. So many are probably disappointed. Just like me.

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Are you sure? It is beta and it says

This is beta software and not production ready. But feel free to use it at your own risk!

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Seems you are right.

In fact, it is interesting to note that I havce been using external Collabora (CODE) (builtin not installed). After upgrade to NC 23, it works as before but as abvertised, the visuals are better and the external Collabora surprisedly declares itself as ā€œNextCloud Officeā€ when click about.

Upgraded to the newly dropped version of CODE 21.11.4 and Nextcloud Office still doesnā€™t work. Still having the issue where Office documents download instead of opening.

Hereā€™s a guide to get it working - PSA: How to get collabora working on nextcloud 23!

Thanks for this, but my Nextcloud has several hundred GB of data spread across multiple accounts. Iā€™m definitely not in a position to do a clean install on a whim.

You should test new releases then on a seperate test instance before you upgrade your production instance. I only have a small instance for me and my girlfriend, but I always test new releases in a seperate VM with a seperate Nextcloud Installation.

In general, my experience with Nextcloud over the last years has shown, that it is not a good idea to upgrade on day 1 to a new Nextcloud release, especially if you use a lot of apps. There are always a few apps not ready on release day. So either set up a test instance or wait until at least the first point release if you want to be sure that everything is working after a major upgrade. And yes I agree that Nextcloud should only release new versions when at least all core apps are working, but unfortunately my experience has shown that this is almost never the caseā€¦

Now, If you already updated your production instance to Nextcloud 23, you have imho two options: Wait for an update of the Built-In Collabora Server or use the official Collabora Docker image instead. With the Docker image everything is working as advertised, including the new Nextcloud Office interface.

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It would be very nice if they would tell us if the build in code server will work again in the future. Or that you have to switch to the Docker Code

I think it was never intended not to work. :wink:

Screenshot_20211204-185115

Here it is, using external collabora instance in kubernetes. I am so suprised that it advertised itself as nextcloud office. It seems that the visual effects enhancements are due to NC codes, not collabora.

Be frank, I never had good experience using built-in onlyoffice or collabora: canā€™t install, or too slow. External services are always better, even u have only one bare metal server. According to my experience, the office function never malfunction after NC upgrade, if hosting it externally.

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Thanks for this, this worked for me as well. My Collabora intsance is within my cloud server so I just took the internal code block and inserted it into my Nextcloud.conf

Worked a treat

Unfortunately not viable for me because it cant be used behind a reverse proxy.

You should test new releases then on a seperate test instance before you upgrade your production instance. I only have a small instance for me and my girlfriend, but I always test new releases in a seperate VM with a seperate Nextcloud Installation.

Thatā€™s fair enough! Iā€™m still pretty new to Nextcloud so Iā€™ve been trying to keep my instance up to date but I shouldā€™ve probably waited a bit longer.

Having Collabora working isnā€™t super critical so I guess Iā€™ll just wait it out.