How to enable importing and exporting different file formats with LibreOffice

Enabling extra import/export formats with LibreOffice

Etherpad can import and export several file formats out of the box, with no extra software:

Format	Import	Export
Plain text (.txt)	✅	✅
HTML (.html, .htm)	✅	✅
Etherpad (.etherpad)	✅	✅
Microsoft Word (.docx)	✅	✅
PDF (.pdf)	—	✅

To import/export the remaining formats you need LibreOffice installed on the server:

Format	Import	Export
OpenDocument Text (.odt)	LibreOffice	LibreOffice
Legacy Word (.doc)	LibreOffice	LibreOffice
Rich Text (.rtf)	LibreOffice	LibreOffice
PDF (.pdf)	LibreOffice	(built-in)

Etherpad previously used AbiWord for this. AbiWord is no longer supported — use LibreOffice instead.

1. Install LibreOffice

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libreoffice

Fedora / RHEL

sudo dnf install -y libreoffice

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install --cask libreoffice

Find the path to the soffice executable:

which soffice            # e.g. /usr/bin/soffice
# macOS: /Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice

2. Point Etherpad at it

In your settings.json, set the soffice key to the absolute path of the soffice executable:

{
  "soffice": "/usr/bin/soffice"
}

Restart Etherpad. Once soffice is configured, the advanced import/export formats become available automatically.

Docker

The official Docker image does not bundle LibreOffice (to keep the image small). To include it, build with the INSTALL_SOFFICE build argument:

docker build --build-arg INSTALL_SOFFICE=1 -t etherpad .

The build sets soffice for you when LibreOffice is installed this way.

Troubleshooting

• Imports/exports silently fall back to plain text or fail — check that the soffice path is correct and that the file actually exists on the server (ls -l /usr/bin/soffice). Etherpad ignores a soffice path that does not exist and logs a warning at startup.
• .docx already works without LibreOffice — that is expected; only .odt, .doc and .rtf (and .pdf import) require it.