ExcelPackage vs. OpenXML SDKs

Question

Using ExcelPackage (CodePlex) to manipulate Excel docs is intuitive, straightforward, and what any developer would expect, i.e.:

Workbook.Worksheets[i].Cells(j, k).Text 

However, the project is incomplete, missing features we all need, and has been abandoned. Emails to the contributors have gone unanswered. I suspect it is because they anticipated that either that the project should be re-written using Linq to XML, or else that they anticipated that the OpenXML SDK would supercede ExcelPackage. 

There's an effort to continue it as the OfficePackage project on CodePlex. I am a contributor to this project, but I'd like to know more about the direction of the OpenXML SDK's before I invest too much time in it.

Specifically:

1) Is the intent of the OpenXML SDK to eventually act as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel ? I can't find anything in the OpenXML SDK (2.0) that comes close to this.

2) What's the timeframe/timeline for an OpenXML API?  Specifically, when is it going to go from being a lot of talk about XML, which honestly 80% of us don't want to know about (unless we need it under the covers for some application-specific reason), to being about manipulating documents via a clean, intuitive API?

3) If I just want to change the value of a cell in an Office 2007 Excel spreadsheet, what is the recommended approach today?

Thanks!

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Jeffrey Knight | MCTS .NET 2.0 | RHCT | http://www.rootsilver.com

Answer 1

Jeff,

I have spent quite a bit of time on the OpenXML SDK and I must say that I have let go of the idea that I might be able to do what I want using it. The amount of effort you need to put in to do something simple is disturbing!

What was done with ExcelPackage is more what I need but unfortunately it was abandoned. There are a few things that I would like to see happening in it, but I simply don't have the time to sit and figure out how the innerworkings of OpenXML works to be able to contribute to the project. I really would like to see this project move on and continue on its development. I saw that there are a few changes that was made on the OfficePackage project, but something that I desperately need is to be able to change the colours of cells, change the fonts (type, style, etc) but there isn't really a good solution to this at the moment. I know that the OfficePackage project has got something in to get the cell data to be using a bold font style, but I had a look at the code and it would be adding alot of clutter so I'm giving that a skip at the moment.

I appreciate the effort everyone is putting in to get OfficePackage/ExcelPackage out but I wish more people with great knowledge of OpenXML can join on this project so that we can get a product out which will really fulfill everyone's needs.

Regards,

Marais