Web Service to Generate Word Documents

I’m just starting to work on a Web Service that will generate Word 2007 documents from a set of templates.  The inputs will be data from a SharePoint list. (More on that part of it when I get there.)

As I began setting up the Web Service, I realized that the System.IO.Packaging and Microsoft.Office.DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging assemblies don’t seem to be available to add as references if the project is a Web Service.  If your project is a Windows application, they are.

I found the solution in a couple of great articles by Erika Ehrli at Microsoft: Building Server-Side Document Generation Solutions Using the Open XML Object Model, Part 1 and Part 2.

I had already downloaded and installed the assemblies:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. You need to use the System.IO.Packaging namespace. You can download and install the .NET Framework 3.0 from the .NET Framework Developer Center.

• Open XML object model API. You can download and install the Microsoft SDK for Open XML Formats Technology Preview from the Microsoft Office Developer Center.

Then I needed to manually add the references:

• local_drive:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.0\WindowsBase.dll
• local_drive:\Program Files\2007 Office System Developer Resources\OpenXMLSDK\1.0.0531\lib\Microsoft.Office.DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll

Finally, I added the following code to web.config:

      <compilation debug="true">
        <assemblies>
          <add assembly="Microsoft.Office.DocumentFormat.OpenXml, Version=1.0.531.0,
              Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
          <add assembly="WindowsBase, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
              PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
        </assemblies>
      </compilation>

Technorati tags: Web Service, Word 2007, document generation, OpenXML