apHarmony offers Microsoft Office integration services.  Whether you are looking export data into a Word or Excel format, import Excel files, or perform advanced Office integration such as automated Access reporting, we will be happy to bring our team to your software development project.  Please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522 for a free evaluation and quote.

There are a variety of ways to integrate with Microsoft Office, from in-line scripting to fully external automation.  In-line scripting is the simplest to develop and is generally favored if possible, however many applications that are server-based will require a more automated solution.  Although the Office API can be leveraged for simple applications, this often requires a dedicated server and locked-down permissions to prevent hackers from performing injection attacks and rooting the server.  Ideally, automation applications should perform operations through a dedicated API that can manipulate the source files directly.

The flexibility of Office applications can make it an ideal solution for data import and export.  With the prevalence of the XLSX spreadsheet format, users can manipulate data in an Excel spreadsheet and send it back to the system when complete.  This can help simplify data entry and upload, both improving user productivity and system capability.  The challenge in supported Excel import is with the document format.  The new OpenXML format changed how Word and Excel documents operation, and results in two different document formats that need to be supported.

In addition to using Excel for data import and export, Word documents can be very effective for data merging applications.  By providing templating functionality for users through Word documents, users can develop their own reports and mail merge instances.  This can both save on development time and allow for more system capability.

For a free evaluation and quote on a Microsoft Office integration project, please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522.