Groupdocs Editor MCP

GroupDocs.Editor MCP Server

Let Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and any other MCP agent edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and text documents without wrecking their formatting — replace text in place, round-trip a document (or one worksheet, slide or PDF page range) through editable HTML, and fill Word form fields. Locally: your files never leave your machine.

Install in 60 seconds

One-click installs pre-fill every supported setting: edit the placeholder documents

folder after install (output defaults to the same folder); an empty

GROUPDOCS_LICENSE_PATH runs in evaluation mode - point it at your license to lift limits.

More clients - ready-made configs for Claude Code, Codex CLI, Visual Studio 2022,

Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, and JetBrains Rider live in install/generated/.

Requires the .NET 10 SDK for native runs — or skip straight to Docker.

Run directly with `dnx` (recommended — no install step):

dnx GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp --yes

Pulls the latest stable release on every invocation. To pin a version (recommended for shared configs and CI), append @ :

dnx GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp@26.10.0 --yes

The server reads and writes documents in GROUPDOCS_MCP_STORAGE_PATH (default: the current directory). Edited copies are saved next to the originals and never overwrite an existing file.

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{

"mcpServers": { "groupdocs-editor": { "type": "stdio", "command": "dnx", "args": ["GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp", "--yes"], "env": { "GROUPDOCS_MCP_STORAGE_PATH": "/path/to/documents" } } } }

To use a license, add "GROUPDOCS_LICENSE_PATH": "/path/to/GroupDocs.Editor.lic" to env —

omit it to run in evaluation mode.

Claude Code

claude mcp add groupdocs-editor -- dnx GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp --yes

VS Code / GitHub Copilot

Use the Install in VS Code button above, or copy the ready-made snippet from the NuGet package page into .vscode/mcp.json, or take install/generated/vscode-mcp.json from this repo.

Visual Studio 2022 (17.14+)

Create .mcp.json in your solution root with the contents of install/generated/vs2022-mcp.json.

Cursor · Windsurf · Cline · Rider · Codex

• Cursor — use the Add to Cursor button above, or paste install/generated/claude-desktop.json into ~/.cursor/mcp.json.
• Windsurf — follow install/generated/windsurf.md.
• Cline — paste install/generated/cline.json into Cline's MCP settings.
• JetBrains Rider — follow install/generated/rider.md.
• Codex CLI — codex mcp add groupdocs-editor -- dnx GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp --yes, details in install/generated/codex.md.

Docker

docker run --rm -i \

-v "$(pwd)/documents:/data" \ ghcr.io/groupdocs-editor/editor-net-mcp:latest

Images are published to GHCR (ghcr.io/groupdocs-editor/editor-net-mcp) and Docker Hub (groupdocs/editor-net-mcp) for linux/amd64 + linux/arm64, tagged latest plus an immutable version tag matching each NuGet release (e.g. :26.10.0). The image needs no native setup.

Docker on Linux: run the container as your user

The image runs as a non-root user (uid 1654), and a bind mount keeps its host owner — so on a Linux host every edited file the server writes into /data fails with Permission denied unless the container runs as you:

docker run --rm -i --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \

-v "$(pwd)/documents:/data" \ ghcr.io/groupdocs-editor/editor-net-mcp:latest

JSON client configs run no shell, so put the numbers in: "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "--user", "1000:1000", …]. Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS does not need this.

Global dotnet tool

dotnet tool install -g GroupDocs.Editor.Mcp

groupdocs-editor-mcp

Available MCP Tools

Worksheet, slide and page numbers are 1-based. Every failure sets isError and starts with the tool's prefix, e.g. HTML extraction failed for 'report.docx': …, so a client needs one check.

Example prompts for AI agents

Replace "ACME Corp" with "Globex" in contract.docx and keep the formatting.

Give me the second worksheet of budget.xlsx as HTML so I can edit it. Save edited.html back as a Word document, and also as a PDF. Fill the form fields in application.docx: name = Jane Doe, agree = yes. Which formats can GroupDocs.Editor open and save?

Evaluation mode

The MCP server itself is MIT; the GroupDocs.Editor engine requires a license for production use. Without one every tool still works, with these limits (measured on GroupDocs.Editor 26.6.1):

• Edited output starts with an evaluation banner ("Created with evaluation version of GroupDocs.Editor …").
• A saved workbook gains an extra worksheet.
• Only the first 2 pages of a PDF, the first 2 (visible) worksheets of a workbook and the first 2 slides of a presentation can be edited. The engine would silently return part 2 for a higher number; the server refuses the request instead and says why. Saving an edited part back into worksheet or slide 3+ is not limited.

Responses of the editing tools then start with one Evaluation mode: line. Call `get_license_status` to see which mode is active.

Licensing

There are two ways to license the server.

License file — point GROUPDOCS_LICENSE_PATH at your GroupDocs.Editor (or GroupDocs.Total) license file. Works offline.

Metered (pay-per-use) — set both GROUPDOCS_METERED_PUBLIC_KEY and GROUPDOCS_METERED_PRIVATE_KEY. You pay for what you process, which suits agent workloads. If both a metered key pair and a license file are configured, metered wins and the file is ignored.

Metered mode needs outbound connectivity. Usage is reported to GroupDocs servers, so air-gapped

or firewalled deployments must allow that egress — or use a license file instead.

Keeping the private key out of your config

The metered private key is a secret. MCP client configs are plain files, and a project-scoped .mcp.json is committed by convention, so prefer, in order:

1. Set the variables in your OS environment and leave them out of the config entirely — an stdio MCP server inherits its client's environment. On macOS an app launched from Finder does not inherit shell exports; use launchctl setenv or launch the client from a terminal.
2. Reference them indirectly if your client supports it (Claude Code expands ${VAR}; VS Code uses ${env:VAR} and ${input:...}).
3. A literal value in a user-scoped config (for example ~/.claude.json) is acceptable for a single developer.
4. Never commit a literal key in a project-scoped .mcp.json.

For Docker, forward the values without writing them into any file:

docker run --rm -i \

-e GROUPDOCS_METERED_PUBLIC_KEY -e GROUPDOCS_METERED_PRIVATE_KEY \ -v /path/to/documents:/data \ ghcr.io/groupdocs-editor/editor-net-mcp:latest

• Get a free 30-day temporary license
• Purchase a license · Product page

Configuration

| GROUPDOCS_LICENSE_PATH | Path to a GroupDocs licens