MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

Dave Burke pointed out a very good point in regards to my post of exporting to Excel. In his comments he reminds us that reverse engineering is illegal... remember that. If you really want to do a lot with the exporting to Excel you will need at least Excel XP and this reference on MSDN: XML Spreadsheet Reference.  I haven't actually seen what it contains, but the Excel 2003 xml schema download is available on the : Office 2003 XML Schema Licensing page

posted on Friday, April 09, 2004 6:31 AM

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# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

Jason, Obviously myself and others have gotten a lot of mileage from your post on exporting to Excel with formulas. (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/jhaley/archive/2004/03/20/9583.aspx) Thanks again for posting it.

For the record, it was Jerry Pisk who correctly pointed out that I mis-represented what I was doing by using the term outputting to "native Excel." It was also Jerry who rose the issue of reverse engineering. Personally, I was happy to be able to follow your post instructions to spit out HTML! :-) Sorry for any confusion.

4/9/2004 3:02 AM | Dave Burke

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

Thanks Dave, I'm glad other people are getting some use out of it. I know my customers (internal customers that is) love the formulas being in the downloaded "excel" file.
4/9/2004 3:12 AM | Jason haley

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

Reverse engineering is illegal. Is this a fact or opinion?
4/9/2004 3:45 AM | Henry Erich III

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

Illegal or not... since I'm not a lawyer and can't tell you for sure, I would say it depends. EULA's and Copyright's cover a lot of stuff so I'm betting its illegal in most cases - especially if you try and make a profit off of it (which I'm not). In my case where I used Excel's generated HTML (which everyone who owns Excel can use) in the promotion of the user buying and using excel I would hope Microsoft would not chase me down, besides the fact that the first thing they teach you in law school - don't sue people who don't have any money.
4/9/2004 5:09 AM | Jason haley

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

>>"don't sue people who don't have any money. "
>> =] Hee hee. Is that really the first thing taught in law school?
4/9/2004 6:26 AM | Henry Erich III

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

That is what my friend Brad (who is a lawyer) told me.
4/9/2004 8:54 AM | Jason haley

# re: MSDN reference for Excel xml spreadsheet

In Australia, and probably in other jurisdictions too, reverse engineering is illegal unless it is performed 'for the purposes of interoperability' between an existing piece of software which is being reverse-engineered, and a new piece of software which will be implemented based on the results of the reverse engineering.

So at least in some jurisdictions, whether it is legal or not 'depends'...
11/12/2006 7:04 PM | Matt

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