What Are Microsoft Office Web Components?

The Microsoft Office Web Components are a set of ActiveX controls and .NET server-side libraries that allow developers to easily add full-featured, interactive charts, tables, and other Excel-like objects directly onto their ASP.NET or HTML pages. These components were included with various versions of the Microsoft Office suite from 2000 through 2010.

To use these web components in your own applications you will need a copy of Visual Basic (VB)6/7 or .NET installed on your development machine as well as either VB5/VB6 for ActiveX controls, or VS.NET Professional Edition upwards. If you don't already have them installed then download and run the appropriate redistributable package from here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/297240

Once downloaded double-clicking 'OWC11.exe' will start a wizard which guides through installing both the ActiveX controls (for use within Internet Explorer) as well as the .NET libraries onto your system. Follow any prompts to complete installation.

After successful install you should now be able to reference these components directly from within your code using either late binding or early binding depending on personal preference and project requirements.

Here is an example of how to add a simple Excel worksheet into a Windows Forms application in Visual Studio 2012:

Imports System.Windows.Forms

Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop

Public Class Form1

Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Loaded

Dim oExcelApp As New Application()

' Create new workbook and sheet

Dim oBook = oExcelApp.Workbooks.Add()

' Add a worksheet to the active book (which is our newly created one)

Dim oSheet As Worksheet = oBook.Sheets().Item(1)

With Me.Controls

.Add(New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.OLEObject('Forms.excel.sheet.10', _

New System.Drawing.PointF(100, 50), _

System.Windows.Forms.HorizontalAlignment.Center))

End With

Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)

End Sub

End Class

What are microsoft office web components