This container made editing my Nextcloud documents so much better

It's been a few months since I've had my NAS up and running, and while I generally try to leave it untouched as much as possible, I am still a relative newcomer to this world, so I keep finding new problems and solutions. When I initially set it up, I used Nextcloud to store all my important documents, and in case I needed to edit them, I set up Collabora Office through the built-in CODE server.

This functioned, but performance wasn't great and felt very stuttery. Thankfully, while perusing the Nextcloud apps recently, I noticed the OnlyOffice app, and I had to try it. I had to look into the official documentation, but once I got it up and running, it was totally worth the transition. This new setup is perfect for me, and I highly recommend you try it out if you're self-hosting Nextcloud.

The problems with Nextcloud Office

The simpler solution isn't always the best

I could blame Nextcloud Office for all my problems, but in fairness, part of my problems with it were my own doing. I was setting things up for the first time, and I wanted the simplest route, so when I installed Nextcloud Office, I chose the option to use a built-in Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) server, with Collabora Office being the basis for Nextcloud Office. The CODE server runs within the Nextcloud container, which is already inside a VM running TrueNAS in Proxmox, so it gets a bit messy.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, performance when editing documents wasn't particularly great. I noticed it the most when using spreadsheets, trying to resize columns felt slightly delayed when I tried to do it.

I could have set up a separate container in TrueNAS for a dedicated CODE server, but at the same time, I didn't love the UI in Nextcloud Office in general. Nextcloud Office is based on Collabora, which is based on LibreOffice, and that's not my go-to tool for this kind of thing. So, when I discovered the OnlyOffice app, I knew that was the one for me. I already like the OnlyOffice desktop apps, after all, so it made total sense.

Setting up OnlyOffice

It's not as hard as I thought

Of course, when I saw the OnlyOffice app in Nextcloud, it didn't immediately click for me that this was only a connector meant to be used with an external document server. But a quick look at the documentation put me on the right track, and thankfully, setting up is not that difficult.

TrueNAS Scale has the OnlyOffice Document Server app listed on its Discover app store, so I just needed to set it up with relatively basic settings. Outside of setting the required fields like passwords and the JWT secret, the main thing I did was set the server to Publish port on the host for external access. Because my Nextcloud instance is set up to require HTTPS connections, I also had to put the OnlyOffice server behind a reverse proxy with a proper certificate so that Nextcloud accepted the connection. This required a bit more work, but it's relatively trivial if you've already set up Tailscale and Nginx to access to your NAS apps externally with a custom domain like I have.

I then went into the Nextcloud administration settings and headed into the OnlyOffice section. All I had to do was point Nextcloud to the custom URL I created for OnlyOffice along with the JWT secret I defined when creating the OnlyOffice container, and it was good to go.

I can set up which file types OnlyOffice handles by default, but otherwise, there wasn't really much else I needed to do. I could just browse my files in Nextcloud and open them in OnlyOffice instead of Nextcloud Office.

Using OnlyOffice in Nextcloud

It's great

With everything set up, I naturally tried to open some files in my Nextcloud storage, and it was great. OnlyOffice loads relatively quickly, and it offers a fairly smooth experience. Actions like scrolling through spreadsheets aren't exactly as smooth as natively running the apps on your PC, of course, but it's not too far behind, and it's perfectly usable. The biggest delay I notice is opening the documents for the first time, but it's not too different from any typical cloud storage service.

This is a fully-featured office app, too, even including support for real-time co-editing of files with other users on the same Nextcloud instance. With the right setup (which I admittedly don't know yet), you could even share documents with users on the internet, outside your home network. I also like that the UI more closely resembles Microsoft's Office suite with the ribbon UI and tabs, as it's definitely my preferred design paradigm compared to the likes of LibreOffice or even Google's suite.

OnlyOffice isn't necessarily my office suite of choice on desktop, but it works great here. When I want to edit documents on most of my devices, I can just have the Nextcloud app sync my files and open them in my local editor, such as WPS Office. But if I need to access them in a pinch on a computer where I haven't set up a proper office suite yet, this solution doesn't make me feel like I'm missing out on much.

I love this setup

As time as gone on, I'm closer to perfecting my NAS setup for my needs, and this change to my office suite has been one of the best upgrades I've done. I really do enjoy my experience editing documents in Nextcloud much more now, and it's even better as a "cloud" storage solution for me.

It's just cool to learn to make my NAS and home lab work better for me. I also recently moved my Jellyfin instance from TrueNAS to my Proxmox host and enabled hardware acceleration, and that was also a great upgrade. I'm sure I still have a lot to learn, but I'm looking forward to it.