ONLYOFFICE 7.0: online forms, password protection in sheets, collaboration improvements and much more
ONLYOFFICE 7.0 released

MS Word "Fields"

Docs
#1

Hello,
we are considering using OnlyOffice to collaborate on our reports.

We strongly use MS Word “Fields” to define strings of text that we need to have in several locations in our documents, we can edit those fields once in “Quick Parts/Field…” and see the new value everywhere in the document.

I notice that OnlyOffice doesn’t have that feature. If I open a docx document created in MS Office containing such Fields they will be displayed in OnlyOFFICE but it’s not attached to a single variable, like OnlyOffice ignores those Fields defined in the docx headers. I can right-click on the text and hit “Refresh field” but OnlyOffice replaces the text with “!!! can’t find field”. Although other that that right-click menu item, I see no menu item leading to the fields editor.

Why is that? Is it a missing feature? Is there a workaround to define a small piece of text in one place and repeat it to several places in the document?

#2

Hello @Jimmy
Could you please provide us with an example of the file, where described situation is reproducible. We will check it out.

#3

Hi Alexandre,
see this file ONLYOFFICE

It was crerated with libreoffice Write application. It’s possible to do it with MS Word as well, I just wanted to show that LibreOffice does it as well so it’s not limited to Microsoft only.

It shows a word that has been defined in “File/Properties/Custom Properties” and added to the document using “Insert/Field/More Fields”.

This is useful when you need to define a small piece of text that is repeated several times in a document and that could change over time while you work on a document for several weeks or you deliver several versions. You edit it only once in the properties and it updates everywhere in the document.

Why does OnlyOffice doesn’t support that? Is it on purpose? Is it going to be implemented later?

Why does Onlyoffice have “Refresh field” right-click menu on the item but will show Error! Reference source not found.

It looks like someone tried to give the feature but the software doesn’t fully handle the fields feature yet.

I hope it’s coming soon, our business could use the software only then.

Thanks,
Jimmy

#4

see this file ONLYOFFICE

Sorry, but access is denied. Can’t open the file or download it.

#5

Hi.
It looks like no matter how much I try to describe the situation, you will not try to understand.

#6

Dear @Jimmy
Sorry if my answers upset you. But I need an example of the file which you mentioned to check it out (open in a few different editors > compare behavior which you described). It’s a necessary step in troubleshooting.
The file you provided doesn’t open.

#7

I believe there’s not much to troubleshoot, it’s just a missing feature from Onlyoffice.

Here’s the file ONLYOFFICE

#8

Hello,
before going to troubleshoot, please read this article, View or change the properties for an Office file (microsoft.com)

#9

Thank you!
I will update this post, when I get any news.

#10

Hello @Jimmy
Sorry for the late reply. We checked the situation and we added a bug to internal tracklist (internal number - 56430). We have started working on it.