Welcome to the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office

Welcome to the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office. The SDK is built on the System.IO.Packaging API and provides strongly-typed classes to manipulate documents that adhere to the Office Open XML File Formats Specification. The Office Open XML File Formats specification is an open, international, ECMA-376, Second Edition and ISO/IEC 29500 standard. The Open XML file formats are useful for developers because they are an open standard and are based on well-known technologies: ZIP and XML.

The Open XML SDK 2.0 simplifies the task of manipulating Open XML packages and the underlying Open XML schema elements within a package. The Open XML SDK 2.0 encapsulates many common tasks that developers perform on Open XML packages, so that you can perform complex operations with just a few lines of code.

Portions of ISO/IEC 29500:20081 are referenced in the SDK.

Publish date of this reference: November 2011