Office documents open read only as default possible?

sawo · May 9, 2025, 7:53am

Hi,

is there any option / setting to open .odt,.ods,… per default as read only?

I found a old ticket, but it don’t look like there is any option:

github.com/nextcloud/server

Open editable files in read-only mode

offen 09:49AM - 19 Nov 21 UTC

geschlossen 12:26PM - 16 May 22 UTC

pmarini-nc

enhancement needs info 0. Needs triage stale

### How to use GitHub * Please use the 👍 [reaction](https://blog.github.com/2…016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/) to show that you are interested into the same feature. * Please don't comment if you have no relevant information to add. It's just extra noise for everyone subscribed to this issue. * Subscribe to receive notifications on status change and new comments. **Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.** When opening editable files in the browser for which the user has write privileges, it would be useful to give the possibility to have it opened in read-only mode. In many use cases, this is what users most likely want to do so it could be even considered as the default opening mode. The files that I'm thinking of are: - text and markdown files that can be edited in the browser with Nextcloud Text - spreadsheets, presentations and word documents that can be edited in the browser if an Office Suite service is configured When a writable file is opened, the general behavior is the cursor to be placed in the document so it is sufficient that the user press Enter and the document is modified inadvertently. It is true that older versions can be recovered but it can be a complex operation if several users access the same file around the same time and make an unwanted modification. Moreover we cannot currently label/comment version so that the user couldn't write something like "Restoring previous version for unintended modification". **Describe the solution you'd like** It could be a button for example in the side bar or the default opening mode. **Describe alternatives you've considered** There are no alternatives as per my knowledge, just be extra-careful when opening a writable file that I just want to read. **Additional context**

We have a lot of accidental changed office documents so we like to set the read only per default.

31.0.4

Any ideas welcome.

Thanks.