Third Party Office Library or OpenXML?

CodePlex - Aspose for OpenXML

The Open XML SDK for Office simplifies the task of manipulating Open XML packages and the underlying Open XML schema elements within a package. The classes in the Open XML SDK encapsulate many common tasks that developers perform on Open XML packages, so that you can perform complex operations with lines of code.

Using the classes in the Open XML SDK 2.5 is simple. When you have installed the Open XML SDK 2.5, open your existing project or application in Visual Studio, or create a new project or application. Then, in your project or application, add references to the following components:

• DocumentFormat.OpenXml
• WindowsBase

To add a reference in a Microsoft Visual Studio project

• In Solution Explorer, right-click References and then click Add Reference. If the References node is not visible, click Project and then click Show All Files.
• In the Add Reference dialog box, click .NET.
• In the Component Name column, select the components (scroll if you need to), and then click OK.

This project covers the following topics:

• Aspose.Words Vs OpenXML Word
• Aspose.Cells Vs OpenXML Spreadsheet
• Aspose.Slides Vs OpenXML Presentation

What is the use of Aspose .NET Products?

Aspose are file format experts and provide APIs and components for various file formats including MS Office, OpenOffice, PDF and Image formats. These APIs are available on a number of development platforms including .NET frameworks – the .NET frameworks starting from version 2.0 are supported. If you are a .NET developer, you can use Aspose’s native .NET APIs in your .NET applications to process various file formats in just a few lines of codes. All the Aspose APIs don’t have any dependency over any other engine. For example, you don’t need to have MS Office installed on the server to process MS Office files. Below is a list of products we support for .NET developers:

..."

I've mentioned OpenXML in the past and that it's cool that you can use it to get all the deep deep data in Office *x files? Then you've also heard me say what a pain it can be if you're used to a more traditional Office Object Model. It's a completely different way of thinking about your documents... And doing that hurts my brain. So I go out of my way to find libraries that make it easier. One such, that we've bought in my day job, is Aspose. If you've read any MS dev mag, you've seen the ads for them.

I ran across this and sure, it's sales-ware, still it's useful to OpenXML dev's does a good job of showing the differences between the two approaches...

OpenXML SDK Word Processing Code Snippets - Create a word processing document

IMHO, if you can, use a third party library, free or commercial. OpenXML might get the job done and it is free, but the time you spend on it isn't (And remember, friends don't let friend Office interop!)