Denmark abandons Collabora trial after six months of technical troubles
A government pilot to replace Microsoft Office with open-source software in Denmark has ended prematurely, with staff citing formatting problems and compatibility issues.
Microsoft's dominance in office productivity software has survived a test in Denmark. The nation's Ministry for Research, Education, and Digitization—formed after a merger of the former Ministry of Digitization with other agencies—has shut down an effort to transition staff away from Microsoft Office toward an open-source competitor. The trial, which began in 2025 according to Danish outlet Computerworld, involved 38 government workers who were asked to switch from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to Collabora, a British open-source office platform.
The initiative was driven by then-Digitization Minister Caroline Stage, who sought to reduce Denmark's reliance on American technology vendors. The country is not alone in this pursuit; France and the Netherlands have both launched efforts to move away from Microsoft Windows. Yet the Danish experiment appears to have lost momentum rapidly, concluding within half a year of its launch. By the time the Danish government announced an early election in February 2026, the project had already been abandoned, with participating employees reporting difficulties including style inconsistencies, paragraph formatting errors, unexpected blank pages, and problems with change tracking functionality.