Opening OpenXML, the Open XML Package Editor Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010

Office Development with Visual Studio - Open XML Package Editor Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010 (Navneet Gupta)

“We are happy to announce that today we are releasing the Open XML Package Editor Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010 on Visual Studio Gallery. This Power Tool is a Visual Studio add-in that provides an easy way to parse and edit Open Packaging Conventions files, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. This Power Tool enables you to do the following tasks:

• Open any Open XML Package file or XPS Package file directly in Visual Studio 2010.
• Browse the contents of Package files in a tree view.
• Open any XML part directly in Visual Studio's rich XML editor.
• Add or remove parts and relationships directly in the user interface.
• Import and export part contents to and from files.
• Detect when a Package file that is opened in Visual Studio is modified externally. The Power Tool prompts user to reload the file without having to close any open XML part editors.
• Create new Office Packages from a set of templates using Visual Studio's File > New dialog.

This Power Tool was originally shipped for Visual Studio 2008 as part of VSTO Power Tools v1.0.0.0. This new version for Visual Studio 2010 contains all the original features from the previous version and it works the same.

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What I like about the Office 2007 “X” formats, (DocX, XlsX, etcX.. and “M”’s too.. DocM, etc) is that the documents are spelunk'able. That we can open them and see/tweak their insides without magic spells and/or 20+ intelligence. Same goes for XPS (have you ever tried to look at the guts of a PDF? Let alone tweak its content? It’s not pretty).

Sure Open XML isn’t for the casual document diver, but it IS do’able. Thinking about digging into the binary office formats, directly into them without a wrapper/utility/library/etc just gives me hives.

Yeah, yeah, there’s ODF and yeah, yeah, there’s all the past “political” crud about the ISO process and Office’s support for the “official” standard… yeah, yeah, whatever… LOL ;)

I’m just a LOB Dev and just want to build solutions that make my users and my business happy. And if OpenXML does that for us, then I it’s cool in my book…

[Gee, I guess I’m a little uptight today aren't I? lol ]

 

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