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Tools for working with Office Open XML files

I've been asked if we are planning to release tools to help developers work with the new Office Open XML files.  So I thought I'd run down what we currently have planned.

Beta 2 Code Snippets

At Office 2007 Beta2 we will  have ~50 VS 2005 code snippets for working with Office Open XML files.  These snippets are written in both C# and VB.NET and are very similar to the snippets in my previous posts. Each snippet is a function that you can use in your own app development. In the meantime, keep looking here for more examples of how to use WinFX to work with the files. 

File Validation Library

We are working on a libary that developers can use at either run-time or design time to validate that a given Open XML file matches both the structure (all the parts, with the right relationships and right content types) and schemas (validating the XML against the XSD).  This will ship sometime after Office 2007.  Stay tuned for details on this.

Open XML Serializer / Deserializer Library

We expect that it will take some time current applications to be converted to work with the Open XML files which are Zip.  In order to assist during this transition, we are building a serializer/desrialier which will take an Open XML Package and serialize it from Zip to a flat XML representation. 

This is, at least the list we are committed to right now. 

- Kevin

Published Friday, March 24, 2006 3:11 PM by KevinBoske

Comments

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files

Are there plans (or if not any, is this possible) to show how one could use these Open XML files and render them without opening up them in the Office apps. I know this is a far fetched task, but I am trying to see if with the new file formats and new APIs, can applications go away from having to either open word/excel as a separate process or embeded them in their own application using COM and display the documents - can we do that ourselves. I am sure the rendering done by the apps would not be 100% same as what you'd get in Word/Excel, but knowing that its possible would be helpful.

The code snippets sound really great, looking forward to it.
Friday, March 24, 2006 7:12 PM by Keeron Modi

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files

Hey Keeron, we already have something like this for the Word 2003 XML formats. I blogged about it back in September: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/09/30/475794.aspx

There is also a discussion going on around this over at openxmldeveloper.org: http://openxmldeveloper.org/forums/thread/43.aspx

-Brian
Friday, March 24, 2006 7:59 PM by BrianJones

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files


"File validation library : We are working on a libary that developers can use at either run-time or design time to validate that a given Open XML file matches both the structure"

Great news. Those files are easily corrupted with inappropriate code. The last thing you want is replace easily corrupted binary files with a new class of easily corrupted zipped-xml files.
Saturday, March 25, 2006 5:20 AM by Stephane Rodriguez

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files

Any plans on providing code snippets from a VBA prospective?  That is, VBA code.
Some developers may work in an environment where VS 2005 or VSTO is not available.
Saturday, March 25, 2006 9:03 PM by Mike

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files

Hi Mike,

The code snippets and all of the WinFX Packaging code is for working with files on disk, particularly interesting for working with files in a server environment.  To run VBA, you need to open the files in the client application, at which point you're working with an in-memory representation of the files (no longer Open XML, but binary), until the file is saved to disk. Once you have VBA and the client applications you already have a lot more power than working directly with the XML on disk.   Now, having said that, any native library for working with Zip and XML that you can refrence from VBA will allow you to work with files on disk (not active Open XML files in the client).
Sunday, March 26, 2006 11:25 AM by KevinBoske

# re: Tools for working with Office Open XML files

Kevin,

There are quite a few situations I can think of where it would be extremely useful for VBA developers to directly manipulate files on disk without having to open them - e.g. Access VBA code scanning Excel, Word and Powerpoint files to pull metadata from them and import into an Access Db. Or any of the apps doing some pre-load or post-save processing on their files.

As such, it would be extremely valuable for us if the two libraries you mentioned were written in a way that exposed them to COM and therefore made them usable from COM clients.
Friday, April 28, 2006 7:26 AM by Stephen Bullen
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