=OPEN(course_file.xlsm, Moodle)
Teaching with real workbooks?
Moodle already has the plug. It just needs a better editor on the other end.
Moodle's mod_collabora activity is a WOPI host with a single setting: the address of an office editor. Point it at SumOffice and a course file opens in our engine instead — which matters the moment the course is about spreadsheets, because a workbook with macros survives the round. Measured on Moodle 5.0.10 with mod_collabora 5.0.3.
What was measured
| Where | A course activity of the «uploaded file» kind — the ordinary way a teacher puts a workbook in front of a group. |
|---|---|
| Which editor | Chosen by file type: .xlsm to SumSheet, .docx to SumDoc. One address serves both. |
| The round | Opened from the activity, edited, saved back. VBA byte for byte, all five pictures byte for byte, the edit in place. |
| What this does not say | The round used a fixture workbook from our corpus which asks Microsoft Excel to repair it on its own, before any round — so no silent-Excel claim is made here. That claim lives where we measured it on a real workbook: Nextcloud and Seafile. |
| Not counted | Students, courses, activities. Evaluation is free with no time limit; production is the per-application license — which for a university is the difference between a budget and a negotiation. |
Setting it up
# 1. the editors, behind your TLS address
git clone https://github.com/SumOfficeApp/sumoffice-docker && cd sumoffice-docker/nextcloud
cp env.example .env # PUBLIC_URL=https://office.example.com
docker compose up -d
# 2. Moodle: install mod_collabora from the plugins directory, then
# Site administration → Plugins → Activity modules → Collabora
# Collabora URL: https://office.example.comThat is the whole integration: the plugin reads our discovery document from that address and learns which file types we take. Nothing in Moodle is patched, and the plugin stays the one its community maintains.
What travels with the file
.xlsx/.xlsm/.xlsband.docxare edited and saved back natively;.ods/.odtopen by import.- Macros and Power Query travel with the file untouched — the workbook a student downloads is the workbook the course author built.
- One editor per document at a time; a second person opens it read-only.
Check my Excel file tells you in seconds what any course workbook relies on. The other systems we measured →
Then
- Tell us the Moodle version and how many courses use spreadsheets — we will say plainly whether we fit.
- Order a change under your process — your SSO, your storage: from 150 €.