Historically, opening Office files from within Java has always been something of a problem because Office documents (principally Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) were stored in a binary format known to COM developers worldwide as the structured storage format. Office 2003, introduced new XML formats unique to itself (such as WordML), which Java developers could use to read or write Office documents, but the formats were not well-documented, and Java developers frequently found themselves learning the WordML format through trial-and-error development. Various open-source projects stepped in to try and mitigate the situation, such as the POI framework from Apache, for reading and writing Excel documents, or various Java-COM solutions With Office 2007, Microsoft has made a significant part of these problems "go away". Without anything more complicated than the native JDK itself-in other words Java apps can now read and write any Office 2007 document, because Office 2007 documents are now nothing more than ZIP files of XML documents.
In Using Java to Crack Office 2007, Ted Neward goes in-depth on the new Office file format and demonstrates reading it from Java.
In Using Java to Crack Office 2007, Ted Neward goes in-depth on the new Office file format and demonstrates reading it from Java.
