Open XML SDK 2.0 Released!

Many programs that need to process documents often require manipulation of the file formats directly and doing that through the Office component object model (COM) won’t scale very well. It also requires that Microsoft Office be installed to run. A better route in a lot of these cases is to use the Open XML SDK. Starting with Office 2007, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations are based on an open standard for packaging XML files called Open XML. You can use the SDK to aid in the development of these types of applications.

I have been using the CTP of the SDK for almost a year so I’m happy to hear that version 2.0 has finally been officially released!

Download the Open XML SDK 2.0 here. Read the documentation here.

Using Visual Basic’s powerful and simple implementation of LINQ to XML and the Open XML SDK you can work with these new document formats much easier than ever before. Check out some of my samples:

Article: Taking Advantage of LINQ and XML in Microsoft Office 2007

Article: Mail Merging Into a Single Word Document Using XML Literals

Article: Merging Text & Photos into a Word Document using Open XML SDK

Screencast: Showing off the Open XML SDK and LINQ

Screencast: More Fun with Office and XML Literals

Code: Working with Open XML in Visual Basic

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Also check out the MSDN Open XML Developer Center for more news, downloads and technical content.

Enjoy!