Read Write Data into a MS Word document

Question

The requirement I am fullfilling directly specifies the need to write data into a Microsoft Word Document and if Necessary, Read Back data from a Microsoft Word Document. The data will be simple text but as time goes on I anticipate the systems engineers may expand the requirement. I want to cross one bridge at a time so I am just concentrating on the text issue. I must do it from within a stand-alone application. Not through a server, not through ASP, not through a browser, just a stand alone application. It appears from my own investigation of the JAVA API that this is not possible. Regrettably, I am only a day or so away from switching to C# or VB to get this job done. My first question is
1. Can Java Do this?
2. If not, does Sun Microsystems have any plans to add this capabiliy?
3. Can we make recommendations to Sun to add this capability to JAVA?

Answer 1

1. Can Java Do this?Java can do anything but there is no built-in ability to do just that.
2. If not, does Sun Microsystems have any plans to add
this capabiliy?
3. Can we make recommendations to Sun to add this
capability to JAVA?Very doubtful! MS Office document formats are not completely open to the public - and they are weird! Supporting this capability would probably require an agreement with Microsoft and it would mean you had to change the API for every time Microsoft chooses to change the document formats.
But there are some open source tools that claim to be rather good at reading and writing MS Office files. Take a look at this one:
http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/index.html