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Office Documents Preview with LibreOffice

Seafile Professional Server supports previewing office documents online by converting them to PDF. You can follow these steps to use the feature. If you'd like to edit office files online, you can integrate Seafile with Microsoft Office Online server, LibreOffice online or OnlyOffice.

Version 7.0 or below

Install Libreoffice/UNO

Libreoffice 4.1+ and Python-uno library are required to enable office files online preview.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-script-provider-python

For older version of Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libreoffice python-uno

On Centos/RHEL:

sudo yum install libreoffice libreoffice-headless libreoffice-pyuno

For other Linux distributions: Installation of LibreOffice on Linux

Also, you may need to install fonts for your language, especially for Asians, otherwise the office/pdf document may not display correctly.

For example, Chinese users may wish to install the WenQuanYi series of truetype fonts:

# For ubuntu/debian
sudo apt-get install ttf-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-zenhei xfonts-wqy

Install poppler-utils

The package poppler-utils is also required.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

On CentOS/Red Hat:

sudo yum install poppler-utils

Enable Office Preview

  1. Open file seafevents.conf, in the OFFICE CONVERTER section:
[OFFICE CONVERTER]
enabled = true
  1. After modifying and saving seafevents.conf, restart seafile server by ./seafile.sh restart
  2. Open a doc/ppt/xls/pdf file on seahub, you should be about the previewing it in your browser.

Other Configurable Options

Here are full list of options you can fine tune:

[OFFICE CONVERTER]

## must be "true" to enable office/pdf file online preview
enabled = true

## How many libreoffice worker processes to run concurrenlty
workers = 1

## where to store the converted office/pdf files. Deafult is /tmp/.
outputdir = /tmp/

Version 7.1+

Install Libreoffice/UNO

Libreoffice 6.2+ and Python-uno library are required to enable office files online preview.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-script-provider-python

For older version of Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libreoffice python-uno

On Centos/RHEL, you need to first remove the default libreoffice in the distribution:

yum remove --setopt=clean_requirements_on_remove=0 libreoffice-*

Then install version 6.4 or newer (Installation of LibreOffice on Linux).

Also, you may need to install fonts for your language, especially for Asians, otherwise the office document may not display correctly.

Enable Office Preview

Open file seafevents.conf, in the OFFICE CONVERTER section:

[OFFICE CONVERTER]
enabled = true
host = 127.0.0.1
port = 6000

After modifying and saving seafevents.conf, restart seafile server by ./seafile.sh restart

The office converter process will be started and listen on 127.0.0.1:6000

In seahub_settings.py, add the following config

OFFICE_CONVERTOR_ROOT = 'http://127.0.0.1:6000/'

Open a doc/ppt/xls file on Seahub, you should be about the previewing it in your browser.

Other Configurable Options

Here are full list of options you can fine tune:

[OFFICE CONVERTER]

## must be "true" to enable office file online preview
enabled = true

## How many libreoffice worker processes to run concurrenlty
workers = 1

## where to store the converted office/pdf files. Deafult is /tmp/.
outputdir = /tmp/

host = 127.0.0.1
port = 6000

FAQ about Office document preview

Document preview doesn't work, where to find more information?

You can check the log at logs/seafevents.log

My server is CentOS, and I see errors like "/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin X11 error: Can't open display", how could I fix it?

This error indicates you have not installed the libreoffice-headless package. Install it by "sudo yum install libreoffice-headless".

Document preview doesn't work on my Ubuntu/Debian server, what can I do?

Current office online preview works with libreoffice 4.0-4.2. If the version of libreoffice installed by apt-get is too old or too new, you can solve this by:

Remove the installed libreoffice:

sudo apt-get remove libreoffice* python-uno python3-uno

Download libreoffice packages from libreoffice official site

Install the downloaded pacakges:

tar xf LibreOffice_4.1.6_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz
cd LibreOffice_4.1.6.2_Linux_x86-64_deb
cd DEBS
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Restart your seafile server and try again. It should work now.

./seafile.sh restart

The browser displays "document conversion failed", and in the logs I see messages like [WARNING] failed to convert xxx to ..., what should I do?

Sometimes the libreoffice process need to be restarted, especially if it's the first time seafile server is running on the server.

Try to kill the libreoffice process with pkill -f soffice.bin. Then try re-opening the preview page in the brower again. If you are deploying seafile in cluster mode, make sure memcached is working on each server.

The above solution does not solve my problem.

Please check whether the user you run Seafile can correctly start the libreoffice process. There may be permission problems. For example, if you use www-data user to run Seafile, make sure www-data has a home directory and can write to the home directory.