Lightweight MS Office Components

I have a web app that I'm designing that will generate Word documents w/ embedded Excel charts. We do not have a separate app server, and the web admin is reluctant to install the full versions of Word and Excel on the web server.  Anyone know if there are lightweight MS Office components that I could use instead?

Sam I Am
Sunday, October 12, 2003

There are many toolkits that generate Excel files, but I'm not aware of any that generates .doc. You might get one of the Excel toolkits and use .rtf files instead of the .doc files.

Alternatively, you can just create an HTML file with everything - both Excel and Word will happily open it (and allow the user to save it to their native formats, if she is so inclined).

And, if the concern about installing office on the server is cost/licensing, you might consider installing Open Office instead; It's scriptable, and will happily read and write Office files. You can use it as a batch converter from any of its supported formats to any other. The native Open Office format is a well documented XML format, which will probably be easy for you to generate.

Ori Berger
Sunday, October 12, 2003

If Office 2003 is an option, you can just generate WordML files, which are XML that open fine in Word. But all the clients would need 2003 to make this feasible.

Mike Gunderloy
Sunday, October 12, 2003

Have a look at this http://officewriter.softartisans.com/

John Ridout
Sunday, October 12, 2003

Or just use one of the many Rich Text Controls.

Simon Lucy
Monday, October 13, 2003

  Recent Topics

  Fog Creek Home