Excel filters visible only to current user

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1

Hi there,

We are using OnlyOffice Community Edition 8.3.0 for our team collaboration. We have two questions to consult:

  1. When multiple users edit an Excel file collaboratively, how can we make the filter settings only visible to the current operating user (without affecting other collaborators’ views)?
  2. Does this version support editing xls and doc files directly?

Looking forward to your early reply. Thank you!

2

Hello @daidai ,
In ONLYOFFICE, you can control how spreadsheet filters behave using the modifyFilter permission in the API configuration. If modifyFilter is set to true, any filter applied by a user will be visible to all collaborators (global). If set to false, filter changes will only be visible to the current user (local), and won’t affect what others see.
You can read more in the official documentation here.

For legacy formats (.doc, .xls, etc.), ONLYOFFICE recommends first converting your file to Office Open XML format (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) before editing.
You can find the official recommendation here.

3

Dear,

Thank you for your prompt response. Following your guidance, we have successfully implemented Excel filter toggling between global and personal views using the modifyFilter API setting：config.document.permissions.modifyFilter = false, which works as expected.

However, we’ve encountered an issue: when modifyFilter is set to false (filters restricted to the current user), the Excel toolbar’s filter icon becomes disabled. This prevents users from clicking it to open column-specific filter dropdowns.

We have not found an API or configuration option to enable filter dropdown interactions while keeping filter settings private to individual users.

Our requirement is: By default, set Excel filters to “visible only to me” (via modifyFilter: false) in online editing mode, while still allowing users to click the toolbar’s filter icon to access and use dropdown filters for their own view.

Could you advise if this is achievable? We would greatly appreciate your support and guidance.

Thank you for your time and assistance.

4

Hello @daidai,

Sorry for the late answer.

Thank you for the detailed explanation of your requirements.

We’ve checked the modifyFilter setting behavior. When modifyFilter is set to false, the filter button becomes inactive by design. With this setting, users cannot add or remove filters - they can only modify existing filters without saving changes or displaying them to other users.
Currently, there is no API option that allows the filter button to remain active while keeping filter settings private to individual users in the way you’ve described.