Microsoft announced a fully supported release of the Open XML Format SDK 1.0, read about it here download it here.
Eric White, Technical Evangelist for Open XML, announced an open source project for processing Open Xml documents using PowerShell, PowerTools for Open XML.
I offered my help
I emailed Eric, offered my help and he added me as a developer.
PowerTools for Open XML
Currently there are 33 PowerShell cmdlets. They work with Excel and Word creating and modifying files directly without the Office object model and do not require the installation of Microsoft Office.
I’ve gone through some of the code and scripts, made some changes and reworked the BulkMailing.ps1 example into the ImprovedBulkMailing.ps1 script.
Improved Bulk Mailing
In a nutshell, the script reads an Xml file, dumped from the Northwind customers database, containing customer name, address etc.
The script uses the inline letter and generates 88 separate Word documents customized to each customer.
Download the updated script here.
Excel
Creating a an Excel spreadsheet of the running processes on your system is as simple as
Get-Process | Export-OpenXmlSpreadsheet .\ps.xlsx
Creating a spreadsheet and separate chart of the top 10 memory consumers
Get-Process | sort -Descending PM | select name, PM -First 10 | Export-OpenXmlSpreadsheet .\ps.xlsx ` -Chart -ChartType bar ` -ColumnsToChart PM -HeaderColumn Name
Next Steps
Eric and I have been chatting about several ideas. Improving the underlying PowerShell cmdlets, adding PowerPoint cmdlets, and other ways PowerShell can make short work of leveraging Open Xml.
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Hi Doug,
I have just come across this wonderful stuff – i am a massive supporter of PowerShell, and again its proved its worth ala OpenXML.
However, if you are keen to add another commandlet – please add one that allows this:
Add-OpenXMLDocument “main.docx” “child.docx”
This grabs the contents of the child doc ($child.MainDocumentPart) and inserts it into $main.MainDocumentPart.
It may be simple – i am very tired at the moment – but i cant seem to crack it.
(not much doco on using AddNewPart using PowerShell)
Cheers,
Ben