Have two documents open at once (in separate windows)

hi everybody, i’m new to onlyoffice and it has exceeded my expectations in every regard until today. i’ve run into one design decision that i simply refuse to believe is intentional.

i need to copy some data from one spreadsheet to another and find the default behavior of where it opens a second file in a new tab in the same window making it impossible to view both documents simultaneously bizarre and incredibly annoying.

imagine my frustration then when i realize i cannot simply drag the new tab away to open it in a separate windows. now imagine me burnin with the blinding rage of 1000 suns having wasted half an hour in a vain attempt to… view two spreadsheets at the same time. what the actual f**k guys? how do i open a file in a new window and how is that information this hard to find?

2 Likes

Hi
Personally, I don’t use tabs, instead I changed the parameters so that each file is opened in a new window. Then I use Windows functionalities to display files side by side.
I guess it should unlock you (maybe not exactly in the way you want).

2 Likes

Hello @tyj
@arcqus is right. You can change Desktop Editor setting to achieve desired result:

are you guys talking about the windows version? i don’t have the open file drop down menu item on mac (or anything beyond interface language and theme, see below…).

i’m all for not exposing the 98% of the ms word feature set to the 98% of users who will never use any of it by default, but i think a couple of those settings besides language and dark mode might have been useful for something…

what am i missing here, is the mac version of the editors brand new?

Hi tyj
I might be wrong, but I assume most of the users are running windows on there computers… hence my answer.
I suggest you to indicate that you’re on mac.
Having a pc, I cannot help you there, sorry.

hmm, as far as “most of the users” i can’t say what they’re doing on their machines.

my question was whether a user on a mac can have two documents open in separate windows so they can, you know, view them at the same time…

i don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask now that we’re marketing oo as an enterprise ready office365 replacement.

Hi
I’m talking market share, but I don’t own MSFT (or Apple) shares :slight_smile: .

Yes, I understood :slight_smile:
What I didn’t initially knew was… that you were on a mac.

I’m not OO staff, so I was just giving you my “end user” perspective.
Still from a end-user perspective, what I really appreciate from them is that, compared to other editors (closed-source or open-source), they always try to understand your need and find a solution.
So, if a feature is important to you, I assume that if you request it clearly (a picture is worth…), then you’ll be eared or at least you’ll have a detailed answer.

I hope you’ll get what you need, now I leave this thread where I think I’ll wont be of use anymore :-).

1 Like

umm, if it needed saying being able to view two documents at the same time is not feature bloat for an enterprise office suite.

anyone more closely involved with the project than arcqus care to hazard a guess when we might get that open file setting on mac?

or any other settings for that matter? i can’t imagine this is going to be the last time i need to change something other than the language or dark mode.

Hello @tyj and @arcqus
Sorry, I have missed your discussion for a few days.
@tyj Now I see your request clearly (that you are looking for the same feature as @arcqus described, but on MacOS). Indeed, there’s no similar feature there at the moment. But we are working on it at this very moment and I will update this thread when we have something to share.
Sorry for inconvenience.

Thanks Alexandre, glad to know it’s being actively developed. There’s a big market of people that want you to succeed with this product, but I think it’s probably counter productive to be marketing the mac version as a commercial product till it’s a little further along.

I’m beta testing it in a small all apple firm at the moment and will post any further limitations I run across that I think would be major barriers to widespread adoption by organizations that primarily issue apple hardware.

1 Like

Thank you, we constantly improve our products. This forum makes great impact on our work. We appreciate users’ feedback and bug reports. Together we build the best apps.
Please feel free to contact us if you face any issues.

it’s probably counter productive to be marketing the mac version as a commercial product

To be honest, I don’t get this part of message. Desktop Editors is a free app on all platforms.

You are marketing editors and your integrated document management/collaboration platform as a budget enterprise product including the Mac version for a couple grand a year iirc.

You should probably implement features like being able to view multiple documents at once before you go down that road. Marketing editors as a viable replacement for ms office in an enterprise context only for people who are interested in office alternatives to try it and find out they can’t view two documents at once is going to hurt your brand long term.

It reinforces that person’s impression that there are no serious alternatives to microsoft for business users and less likely to try Onlyoffice again in a few months or years when it may actually be a viable alternative to office365 or parts of it. Hope that makes sense.

1 Like

Hey @tyj :handshake:
This topic has caught my interest :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

As my colleague mentioned earlier, the desktop versions are completely free.
And we are doing our best to improve it with each new version. Thank you for your interest in our product.
We will try to implement the functionality for Mac in future versions.

Look it’s a great product now and I’m glad it’s being actively developed, it’s the only office suite I’m aware of that’s handling a diverse range of MS file formats seamlessly.

I’m simply arguing that making the commercial version of the product available on Mac before very basic features like viewing two documents at once and most basic settings have been implemented is probably premature and likely to hurt the long term trajectory of the enterprise platform.

1 Like

[quote=“tyj, post:15, topic:6249”]
I’m simply arguing that making the commercial version of the product available on Mac before very basic features like viewing two documents at once and most basic settings have been implemented is probably premature and likely to hurt the long term trajectory of the enterprise platform.
[/quote] :handshake:

I completely agree with you, and I understand your idea, but at the moment, it’s not in our plans to develop ONLYOFFICE Desktop as a commercial version of the product.

Ok I did not understand that distinction, so the paid version of docspace is browser based whether it’s cloud or on-prem like google workspace or whatever their version of o365 is called now?

I am in desperate need for a fully featured Mac app (compared to Windows). Not being able to open documents in different windows is non sensical. Thanks for integrating the Windows features into the Mac app asap!

The only workaround at the moment is to run multiple instances of OnlyOffice on the Mac.
Open the Terminal and run the command open -na "OnlyOffice"
Not user-friendly, because all the windows are named “OnlyOffice” and it’s really confusing to scroll through the opened windows back and forth.

2 Likes

If the cloud version of the editors does not have any of the limitations of the desktop version on Mac is there a free tier for the cloud product at the moment where we can demo the product we’d actually be using with a paid docspace license?

You can use the free version of ONLYOFFICE DocSpace or inquire with sales about a trial version.