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

What other bloggers are saying:

• Gray Knowlton Blog: Open XML SDK 2.0 Released
• John Durant Blog: Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office Is Live
• Eric White Blog: Release of the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
• Brian Jones Blog: Announcing the Release of the Open XML SDK 2.0
• Erika Ehrli Blog: Open XML SDK 2.0 RTM is live! Find Articles, Videos, Code Samples, and Resources on MSDN

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

Enjoy!

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2010
  Hi Beth, I had a project few months back where Word document should have been read from the binary file and number of pages in that document should have been calculated. It was possible to do only having COM object employed and Word itself being installed on the server. Do you think the same can be achieved with new Open XML library?

• Anonymous
  July 01, 2010
  Hi is it documented changes between the Beta and the final release?!?!? I have had problems with TextFontAlignValues   TextTabAlignValues TextAnchoringValues Shape3D Scene3D AppVersion AppNonVisualDrawingProperties Regards Magnus Salgo

• Anonymous
  July 02, 2010
  Hi Magnus, I'm not sure, I'd ask your question in the Open XML forum: social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../threads