In my previous post , I stole code that showed how developers can write code that will generate XLSX files by using the fancy OpenXML SDK on the fly. At the end though, I explained how a workflow activity would have been much better for the scenario I presented, at least from a performance point of view...

A few days ago, Zeyad Rajabi posted a really nice post about using OpenXML with Excel Services . His solution showed an Excel chart that you use to update a workbook and generate a chart showing, in the case of his example, the status of specs in his group. When I saw this post, I decided to ‘one up...

This post shows how to code the sample application shown on this blog. This continues part 2 of this coding series. In this stage, I will show how the link we generated in the previous link causes the page to show correctly to the user. In the previous post, we created a link that looks like this: /Docs...

This post shows how to code the sample application shown on this blog. This continues part 1 of this coding series. Before we go into the code of the sample app , I will explain the flow of the web part page. The previous post showed the building of the page. The two really interesting parts in there...

This post shows how to code the sample application shown on this blog. In my previous post, I showed the “I found something interesting” app which allows users to analyze workbooks and publish their insights. With the following few posts, I will show how this solution is coded. The first element...

Another week, another app (and I use “app” loosely – it’s a SharePoint web-part page). The following sample application is used to allow people to analyze a certain workbook and add insight. The insight may be as simple as marking a certain area in the workbook and pointing people’s attention to it and...

One of the new methods I listed in the post about new features is the SetParameters() SOAP call. This allows callers to set multiple parameters at the same time in Excel Services. In this example I have a simple list containing items and sales of those items. I then use a PivotTable to aggregate the...

This post is going to be pretty light-weight. It will show how to use the OpenWorkbookForEditing and SetCalculationOptions methods. I won’t create some over-arching example – the skills you have in interacting with sessions in Excel Services are the going to be the same. I will discuss the behavior and...

So far I talked about the new extensibility features in Excel Services 2010 – REST and the new JavaScript OM. I thought I would spend some time talking about the existing extensibility mechanism we have – Excel Web Services. With the new release we have added some new functionality to this SOAP interface...

So far we saw how one can call into the EWA at arbitrary times and respond to events by affecting the page around the EWA. This time around we will combine the two mechanisms to make modifications to the workbook when the selection changes. If you will recall, in part 1 , we listened to events over the...

The previous post showed how to start using the Excel Services JavaScript OM to automate the EWA web-part. The example given showed how to cause periodic recalculation on a workbook that’s on a SharePoint web-page. In this post, we will add our first event to the EWA and see how we can get an even...

Edit: I fixed a problem with the skeleton code that made the thing not work in browsers other than IE. In the past few weeks, I wrote a bunch of posts about the new REST APIs in Excel Services. I wanted to take a bit of a breather from those APIs and start writing about the new JavaScript browser...

One of the features gadgets posses is the ability to have a “fly-out” visual aid for “zooming in” or “drilling down” on parts of the gadget. The Excel Services gadget supports that too – for certain types of links. Generally speaking, one should not muck around with the HTML that comes back from Excel...

The first post in this series talked about how to code the settings window and the second talked about how the chart contents is displayed on the gadget itself. In this post, I will show how ranges are treated when the user requests to see them on the gadget. Ranges (and tables and PivotTables) are...

The first part of this series showed how the code in the Settings form worked in the gadget. In this part, I will start describing how the gadget fetches the requested information from Excel Services and displays it. As a reminder, here’s what the gadget looks like when minimized and showing a chart...

In the next few days, my posts will revolve around the mechanisms that make the Excel Services gadget tick. I won’t talk a whole lot about Gadget development – that could easily take up 4 or 5 posts – I will give a very brief overview though on what a gadget is and how it works. You can read more about...

Last week I posted a number of pieces about the various ways the new Excel Services REST APIs allows developers to leverage data and elements from within workbooks by giving direct URLs to them. This post contains details about the available capabilities of the REST APIs – essentially a list of all the...

Margins. In script. To set? Use element.style. marginTop . To get in runtime? Use element. topMargin . Arghhhhhhh! It's like DHTML is forcefuly trying to make me hate it.

The previous post (and the one before ) showed how the Excel Services REST API allows developers to discover information about a workbook as well as get back images of live charts from an Excel Workbook. It is also quite possible to get other types of data – specifically ranges from the spreadsheet...

In my previous post , I showed what embedding a chart from Excel Services inside a blog looks like. In this post, we will take a step back and explore the discovery mechanisms built into the Excel Services REST APIs. Discovery allows developers and users to explore the content of the workbook either...

In my first post about Excel Services and REST , I showed how to construct a simple REST URL pointing directly to a PNG in a workbook. This post was supposed to be about the discovery built into the Excel Services REST API. However, I got a couple of questions about what my previous post actually looks...

Now that Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 is done, I have some more time to start posting about all the nice things we have done with SharePoint 2010 – especially with Excel Services. In the coming months, I will post about Excel Services, concentrating on some of the new capabilities we enabled...

My previous blog entry (which was completely misunderstood by some people who commented - I blame the fact that English is not my native tongue) reminded me of another poor coding behavior. Just so we don't have a repeat of that last post, let me clarify that I have nothing against the as operator -...

EDIT: Contrary to what people understood from this post, it is NOT a "Do not use Generics" post - I think Generics are a GREAT addition to the language/framework and I use them all the time. It is against a very specific usage of Generics Short Answer: Rarely. Slightly longer answer: When you are...

In the ODC 2008, I gave a demo of how to use Excel Web Services from a VBA client - the demo was basically just a managed library that wrapped a generated Web Services proxy. Since Microsoft no longer seems to supply a SOAP toolkit for office, this is the easiest way of achieving access to Excel Web...