Offices do not fail at switching suites because of the software. They fail on templates, fonts and one surprise file on Monday morning. This is the migration plan that avoids all three.
Installing ONLYOFFICE takes ten minutes. Moving an office takes a week of small, correct decisions - and this page is that week, in order. The plan assumes real Indian office conditions: shared PCs, letterheads made years ago by someone who left, files arriving in Microsoft formats, and staff who just want their work to open properly. Follow the order and the switch feels boring. Boring is the goal.
The whole migration in seven lines. Every skipped line is a support call you will take later.
Before installing anything, collect evidence: the biggest spreadsheet, the fanciest letterhead, the presentation the boss actually presents, and every .xlsm macro workbook anyone admits to using. Open each in ONLYOFFICE, save a copy, and compare against the original. This audit takes an hour and decides everything - if the hard files pass, the office will pass. If one fails, you learn it now, privately, instead of during a client deadline.
Your Word templates (.dotx) and Excel templates generally open in ONLYOFFICE, but do not just copy them and hope. Open each master template, check the header, footer, logo position and table styles on a printed page, fix what shifted, and save the corrected version as the new office master in a shared folder. Letterheads, invoice formats, quotation formats and certificates are the four that matter in most offices. One careful hour here replaces a year of "my printout looks different" complaints.
Documents do not carry their fonts with them. If the letterhead was designed in a font that the new machine lacks, ONLYOFFICE substitutes a lookalike with different widths - and margins, tables and page breaks all wander. List the fonts your templates and regular documents actually use, install those same fonts on every desk (respecting their licences, as you would for any software), and the majority of "compatibility issues" your office would have reported simply never occur.
In ONLYOFFICE settings, make DOCX, XLSX and PPTX the default save formats. Your clients, banks and government portals live in Microsoft formats; a file saved as ODT by habit becomes a small confusion at the other end. Native-format defaults mean nobody has to think about formats at all - they save, they send, it opens. Also set ONLYOFFICE as the default opener for the three formats on each PC, so double-click behaviour is predictable for the whole office.
Thirty minutes, one projector, the real office files. Show where the ribbon keeps the ten things your staff actually use - print, PDF export, page setup, tables, mail-merge area, track changes - and the two or three places where ONLYOFFICE names things slightly differently from Microsoft Office. Print a one-page card of those differences for each desk. Staff do not fear new software; they fear looking slow in front of a waiting customer. The session removes exactly that fear.
Leave Microsoft Office (or LibreOffice) installed on at least one machine for the first month, and say so openly. Strange files will arrive - a macro workbook from a chartered accountant, a form only one department uses - and the escape hatch turns each into a two-minute detour instead of a crisis. At month's end, count how often it was used. If the answer is "twice, for odd files," your migration is done and the licences can lapse in peace.
The video reviews the destination suite in depth - show it in the team session so everyone sees what is coming.
Watch Full VideoGenerally yes - templates open and can be saved as the new office masters. Always print-test each master after the move: headers, logos and table styles are the places a small shift shows. Rebuild once, carefully, rather than fixing copies forever.
Skipping the font step. Offices blame the suite for broken layouts that are actually missing fonts on the new machines. Install the fonts your documents use on every desk and most layout complaints disappear.
Keep it on one machine for about a month as an escape hatch for odd incoming files, then judge by usage. Offices without macro estates usually find they barely touched it - macro-heavy offices should keep one licensed seat permanently.