Collabora Office Reviews

It may not have bells and whistles but this is by far the closest thing you will find to open/libreoffice on iOS or iPadOS.

I keep my iPad Pro (2017 version) in a laptop shell with a trackpad and keyboard and CollaboraOffice feels very natural when editing spreadsheets and documents. It does take some getting used to coming from an actual desktop / laptop but you can legitimately use this as a replacement if you have a hardware keyboard attached.

Only hang up is the awkwardness with the spreadsheets where the keyboard will only start working (arrow keys) after you have started to edit a cell. I think this is some weird focusing issue though and is easily to get past mentally.

Overall it is probably the best thing you will find that supports saving in open formats (odt etc) on an iDevice. Thank you so much to the developer because any alternatives I have tried before this were either riddled with ads, required a subscription, or didn’t support the files from libreoffice. Minor touch ups would make this the best office suite alternative to MS Office but all of that is mostly cosmetic.

Just get yourself adjusted to the nuances (which EVERY application has) and it really works for you. Here’s an example: In the spreadsheet you have to input. Tap on the cell and it gets a blue outline, tap a second time and you’re in input mode. If you lose your iPad keyboard just tap the cell a third time. Sounds like a lot - but it’s just getting used to it like any other app. Thanks so much to all the authors/contributes. Keep up the good work!

Thanks Collabora for finally creating an IOS office suite app that rivals the MS suite with both quality and Windows file compatibility, but for free! (My accountant also thanks you!!)

A very few minor bugs, all of which I've been able to work-around. I'm sure they will be fixed sometime soon, as it is so obvious that a lot of time, care, and talent has gone into the crafting of this excellent app, and with so many very recent updates too.

Note to a dissatisfied rater: To move the toolbar off of the first rows of the spreadsheet, just click on the "edit" icon, which is a pencil in the lower right.

To the folks at Collabora: May you and this most excellent app live long and prosper! Where can I send a donation?

Scott Perry

I very much like the idea of this application and really wanted it to work. (I tried it on a 2021 iPad Pro with Logitech Combo Touch keyboard. The application only worked with the trackpad intermittently and the UI controls were too large for the iPad’s screen.

Ultimately I deleted the application because it was not usable with these issues.

I’ve been using this for a while to write on my iPad, and it’s been working fine for me. The biggest issue I have is that the UI is very bright and I don’t think there’s an option to use dark mode - it’s very shocking to the ol’ eyeballs when the rest of the system UI is dark, then your word file opens with the blinding brightness of the sun.

A dark mode would be absolutely fantastic, honestly.

I was hoping to use this to edit LibreOffice Writer documents with my iPad, but it’s completely unusable. To its credit, CollaboraOffice did a wonderful job of locating files and scanning apps, even seeing a wireless-connected USB stick, so I had high hopes. Unfortunately, when I loaded one of the documents (created with LOW Portable 6.x on Windows), it came up as utter garbage on the screen. Multiple lines of text overwrote each other, the “page” display area was broken, and the result was just a complete mess.

The interface looks pretty, but that’s the best I can say about it.

I’ll be honest, CollaboraOffice needs to have cursor movement and text selection fixed.
Right now, I can’t use it easily for day-to-day editing.

That said, there is an enormous potential here and it’s able to open most of my files pretty well!

Does not work well with the iPad keyboard (arrow keys simply ignored) or with the Apple Pencil (instead of simply selecting text, it will select and then delete the text - with no apparent way to change this behavior). These two issues make editing a nightmare.
Trying to insert a hyperlink doesn't work properly; once the window pops up, if you try to click on a field to enter text, the window just disappears). After about 30 minutes trying to use CollaboraOffice I just gave up.

CollaboraOffice looks great and opens up my PCs LibreOffice spreadsheet without any problems.

Unfortunately, the Logitech folio keyboard for the iPad Pro (11” 2019 version iPad Pro) doesn’t seem supported. None of the keys on the keyboard do anything. The Logitech keyboard works fine on all my other apps (using it right now to type this), so it’s just Collabora.

I like the new interface — just released. Great improvement. In my short work with it, the office suite works great! I have one MS Word document that doesn’t show up correctly unfortunately, but that’s a problem with LibreOffice on Mac as well. Great job! Highly recommend!

I tried to do a simple spreadsheet, just a column of numbers. Not sure how to even enter each value, one row at a time. I was finally able to enter a value in the first cell, but not very intuitive, nothing like Excel, or even LibreOffice. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, but there’s no Help available. It also locked up my iPad, the only thing I could do was force power-down. Hopefully LibreOffice will come to IOS !!!

I am glad that I managed to find a free alternative to Office’s apps now that they are implementing anti-piracy tactics, however, every time I want to open a PPTX file that contains my courses lecture notes, CollaboraOffice immediately crashes… please fix this issue! I need to learn the material and Collabora crashes when trying to open the file!

This is a fantastic office suite than most with almost full desktop like features. But since release iOS 14 .. Apple has added mouse support in iPads. CollaboraOffice is missing the proper muse support for selecting text. I can’t use command+A on keyboard to select whole text. So, Sadly CollaboraOffice is unusable for me right now.

I opened an ODS file created by desktop LibreOffice. The columns header and first row of cell data were covered by the format toolbar and there was no way to move it out of the way.

This is less than pre-beta quality issues that should have been fixed before distributing.

I am a huge fan. I am a contributor and I use this exclusively on my desktop and laptop.

For the past few days I have spent more than a few hours trying to open a document from my email on my iPhone. I can’t. I can’t find help. I can’t find instructions. Very disappointed in the waste of my time.

I really want this to be an Apple app replacement but seems like nothing than a desktop port. Much of the functionality requires desktop inputs (right click, etc.). Also crashes A LOT.

Can someone tell me where my document went? Worked on it AND saved it, but it’s nowhere to be found when I open CollaboraOffice back up. Beyond frustrated...

Now it seems like when I start typing the screen turns blue and I cannot type properly anymore.
I deleted CollaboraOffice and downloaded it once again and the same issue still happens

I cannot use this on many of the documents I receive.

6/23/20: new update brings CollaboraOffice to top tier - more than the functionality you need to create top notch files from your iPhone. Very small learning curve but equals/exceeds its Microsoft counterpart.
Kudos development team!

App installs, will not create or open files on iPAD OS 14.

I earnestly want a good iOS words processor. And use Libre Office on my Mac's. CollaboraOffice has so many missing features that one should take for granted as a basic standard that are just not there, or if they are there, they are so clunky they might as well not be there.

Try deleting a sentence by back spacing for example. Hold down backspace and you get one character. No repetition if you long press, so guess what - you delete sentences one character at a time.

Try selecting a sentence, it just selects one word AND ignores any preceding spacers. Soooo selecting a sentence is a three step process, select first word, extend highlight manually to all words, extend highlight to encompass the spacer characters it ignored. Even Libre Office can select a sentence in its entirety with a few taps, CollaboraOffice is supposed to be based on that code.

The indent feature is a nightmare and unusable.

The drop down menus don't go away when you click elsewhere, they hang around open until you return and click the exact menu again.

The onscreen keyboard is a nightmare to invoke when you want to types. Also the keyboard often disappears when you don't want it to.

Try a copy and paste. If you want to copy, then select the text (that three step process I mentioned) and CollaboraOffice does not offer a hover menu with the word "copy", instead you have to go to the drop down menu sat the top and select copy - DINOSAUR feature. Plus now you've got something copied, CollaboraOffice can't detect the clipboard has something in it and then activate a paste hover menu. If you want to paste what you copied, yep, go to the drop down menu at the top and select paste. This is out of the dark ages!

Excruciatingly long winded work flow to do the simplest tasks.

CollaboraOffice is currently rubbish. Definately not a serious attempt at a decent word processor, with all its time consuming clunky features and all its missing features one takes for granted elsewhere.