Oliver Bell’s Weblog

I see Eric White is carrying details of the release of the OpenXML Powertools on his blog today.

If you want to be able to generate OpenXML documents on the server, without an installation of Microsoft Office, then this is the way to do it.

You’ll find the details on Eric’s blog by following this link;

Processing Open XML documents server-side using PowerShell is a powerful approach for creating, modifying, and transforming Open XML documents. The PowerTools for Open XML are examples and guidance that show how to do this. They consist of PowerShell cmdlets, and a number of example scripts that demonstrate the use of the cmdlets. Examples include automated word processing document and spreadsheet generation, and preparing documents for distribution external to a company, including removing comments, accepting revisions, applying a uniform theme to them, and applying a watermark to them.

His blog links to a video that explains how to install and use PowerTools for OpenXML in conjunction with the release version of the OpenXML SDK.

The three scenarios covered in the linked video are;

• Developers who need to automatically generate documents programmatically. For example, developers may need to generate word processing documents from an XML file containing customer data.
• IT professionals who often need to send reports, charts, and spreadsheets that summarize the state of their network, servers, computers, and more.
• Information workers who need to prepare documents for publication outside of their company. To present a consistent appearance of documents, information workers may want to accept all revisions in the document, remove all comments, give a consistent style to the documents, digitally sign them, add a watermark, and more.

He also has a collection of other information that you will find helpful if you are looking for a way to generate or play with OpenXML documents on the server, or on a desktop without Microsoft Office installed.