Automate Office from
Anywhere
sdOfficeTM is an
application that provides platform-independent and
language-independent control over Microsoft OfficeŽ applications
such as Excel, Word, and Outlook. Through a concise series of
commands and parameters, issued by any program locally or over a
network, you can automate Office applications and fully integrate
them with an application.
Through this technology, application programmers in languages
such as BBx, ProvideX, Cobol, Perl, Java, and C can add
sophisticated Office capabilities to their applications, performing
such functions as spreadsheet loading and formatting, letter
writing, mail merging, appointment scheduling, emailing, and contact
database synchronizing.
Software-control for Seamless Operation
Until now,
users had to use "pull" technology, such as ODBC coupled with
complicated VBA macros, to perform automated operations such as
these. With sdOffice, now such operations can be performed under
program control from a host application using live, in-memory data.
The host application can be running under Windows, or on any other
system, such as Linux or Unix, that has network access to the user's
workstation.
sdOffice tasks can operate visibly on a user's workstation during
normal operations, or they can be executed in background for
scheduled processing or unattended operations. For example, a Unix
cron job could be executed nightly to generate Excel workbooks of
sales figures and have them displayed and waiting on each
salesperson's workstation when they arrive at work, or a month-end
run of collection letters could be designed to execute and print
automatically on a departmental printer.
Platform- and Language-Independent
sdOffice supports
any language that can interface with a TCP/IP socket or Windows DDE.
On Unix, interfaces have been written even in languages that don't
have native socket support by using a handle to a perl-based pipe.
Pre-written command file interfaces are provided for BBx, ProvideX,
Perl, and a native Windows .exe. The interface is so clean and
simple you can even perform the automation task manually using
telnet!
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Some key sdOffice features include:
Easy installation on any Windows 95/98/NT/2000 system.
Complete documentation.
Samples and tools for rapid development on any platform.
Excel automation for workbook/worksheet work
Word automation for document management
Outlook automation
Database automation via ADO
Email automation via MAPI
Email automation via MAPI:
Send email using a Microsoft Mail profile
To:, Cc:, and Bcc: via direct addressing or address book names
Attachment support - send documents created by other automations!
Excel automation for workbook/worksheet work, including:
Worksheet data read and write
Cell formatting, including color and font management
Embedded charts driven by worksheet data
Excel function support and macro support
Worksheet sorting and subtotaling
Workbook management and printing
Macro and Sendkeys support
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Database automation via ADO:
Connection via ADO to nearly any database
Read and write via SQL commands
Table and column structure inquiries
Outlook automation:
Email function supporting attachments
Contact database read/write
Appointment database read/write
Tasks database read/write
Word automation for document management:
Text writing, reading, and formatting
Paragraph formatting for margins, indents, etc.
Tables
Bullet- and number-style lists
Images, both in-line and absolute
Mailmerge tag support, and text search/replace
Document management and printing
Macro and Sendkeys support
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