Package apache-poi: Information

The Apache POI Project's mission is to create and maintain
Java APIs for manipulating various file formats based upon
the Office Open XML standards (OOXML) and Microsoft's OLE 2
Compound Document format (OLE2). In short, you can read and
write MS Excel files using Java. In addition, you can read
and write MS Word and MS PowerPoint files using Java.
Apache POI is your Java Excel solution (for Excel 97-2008).
We have a complete API for porting other OOXML and OLE2
formats and welcome others to participate.

OLE2 files include most Microsoft Office files such as XLS,
DOC, and PPT as well as MFC serialization API based file
formats. The project provides APIs for the OLE2 Filesystem
(POIFS) and OLE2 Document Properties (HPSF).

Office OpenXML Format is the new standards based XML file
format found in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2008. This
includes XLSX, DOCX and PPTX. The project provides a low
level API to support the Open Packaging Conventions using
openxml4j.

For each MS Office application there exists a component
module that attempts to provide a common high level Java
api to both OLE2 and OOXML document formats. This is most
developed for Excel workbooks (SS=HSSF+XSSF). Work is
progressing for Word documents (HWPF+XWPF) and PowerPoint
presentations (HSLF+XSLF).

The project has recently added support for Outlook (HSMF).
Microsoft opened the specifications to this format in
October 2007. We would welcome contributions.

There are also projects for Visio (HDGF) and Publisher (HPBF).

As a general policy we collaborate as much as possible with
other projects to provide this functionality. Examples
include: Cocoon for which there are serializers for HSSF;
Open Office.org with whom we collaborate in documenting the
XLS format; and Lucene for which we provide format
interpretors. When practical, we donate components directly
to those projects for POI-enabling them.

Package apache-poi: Information

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