Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide

Office Web Components and Office Server Extensions

The new support for HTML as a native file format means Office documents are "Web-ready" by default. Publishing an Office document to the Web is now as easy as saving a file to your computer's hard disk (or saving an Office document to an HTTP server). But publishing a document is only half the challenge. There are new ActiveX controls, called the Microsoft Office Web Components. The Office Web Components are a collection of controls designed to let you publish fully interactive spreadsheets, charts, PivotTable^® reports, and databases to the Web. By using the Office Web Components on a Web page, you can sort, filter, add or change data, expand and collapse views, work with PivotTable reports, and display your data in a chart. In addition, the Office Web Components are fully programmable, which lets developers create rich, interactive content for Web-based solutions.

The Microsoft Office Server Extensions library allows developers to programmatically work with the objects that enable online threaded discussions. This feature lets you create custom solutions that use the browser to incorporate online discussions with any Office document or Web page.