Office Web Components

Office Web Components (OWC) are a group of OLE classes implemented as ActiveX controls in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003. These ActiveX controls can be plugged into web pages, Visual Basic and VBA forms, Windows Forms or programmed in-memory. The OWC can be used by any COM-compliant Component Object Model programming language. Applications like Excel, Access and FrontPage allowed creating interactive web pages using Office Web Components.

The following components are included:
* Spreadsheet
* Chartspace
* Pivot table
* Data source component

The Office Web Components have been discontinued in Office 2007, and are not included, except as a part of Office Project Server 2007. [cite web
url=http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/07/17/668544.aspx
title=Office Web Components “Roadmap”
author=David Gainer
date=July 17 2006
accessdate=2006-09-10
work=Microsoft Excel 2007 (nee Excel 12)
publisher=MSDN Blogs] However, they will still be available for download from Microsoft's website. Microsoft has not yet offered a complete replacement for the Office Web Components. However, programmers can use a combination of third party products, Excel Services or Visual Studio Tools for Office to provide similar functionality.

There are currently four books in print on programming the OWC.
* The O.W.C Black Book 2nd Edition - Alvin Bruney 2007
* The Microsoft Office Web Components Black Book with .NET - Alvin Bruney 2005
* Professional ASP Programming Guide for Office Web Components: With Office 2000 and Office XP - Qimao Zhang 2001
* Programming Microsoft Office 2000 Web Components - Dave Stearns 2000

ee also

* Comparison of office suites

References

External links

* [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319793 How to find Office Web Components (OWC) programming documentation and samples]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7287252c-402e-4f72-97a5-e0fd290d4b76&DisplayLang=en Office 2003 Web Components]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=982b0359-0a86-4fb2-a7ee-5f3a499515dd&DisplayLang=en Office XP Web Components]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=beb5d477-2100-4586-a13c-50e56f101720&DisplayLang=en Office XP Web Component toolpack containing samples and walkthroughs]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=faaddc0a-a281-4eec-8935-83b6541c80a3&DisplayLang=en Office XP Web Components Animated Walkthrough]