# \[ANN\] ruby-ole-1.2.3 released! **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 28, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408 "2007-12-28T13:16:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408/1 "2007-12-28T13:16:13Z")
The new version of ruby-ole has been released! ruby-ole is a library for read/write access to OLE2 structured storage files, such as those produced by Microsoft Office, eg \*.doc, \*.msg etc. It provides a simple filesystem style api. Details at [GitHub - aquasync/ruby-ole: A library for easy read/write access to OLE compound documents for Ruby](http://code.google.com/p/ruby-ole/). Changes: - MBAT write support re-implmented (for saving large OLE files). - Minor fixes and better test coverage. - Initial (read-only) property set support. - Optimizations from benchmarks and profiling, mostly for writes. ---
**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408/2 "2007-12-28T17:16:29Z")
On Dec 28, 7:16 am, Charles L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > - MBAT write support re-implmented (for saving large OLE files). > - Minor fixes and better test coverage. > - Initial (read-only) property set support. > - Optimizations from benchmarks and profiling, mostly for writes. > – > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/. can it open a excel file and save as csv. ---
**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2007, 8:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408/3 "2007-12-29T08:00:32Z")
Junkone wrote: > On Dec 28, 7:16�am, Charles L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > - MBAT write support re-implmented (for saving large OLE files). > > - Minor fixes and better test coverage. > > - Initial (read-only) property set support. > > - Optimizations from benchmarks and profiling, mostly for writes. > > – > > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/. > > can it open a excel file and save as csv. No, its just an implementation of the underlying file format - just a container like a zip file (though without compression). See the parseexcel library for that purpose. ---
**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2007, 2:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408/4 "2007-12-30T02:55:51Z")
On Dec 29, 2:00Â am, Charles L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > ## No, its just an implementation of the underlying file format - just a container like a zip file (though without compression). See the parseexcel library for that purpose. > > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/. If I understand your situation correctly: you do not have Microsoft Excel and you want to use WIN32OLE to open the Excel file. No, you cannot do that. WIN32OLE effectively turns Excel into a server. This way you can control Excel and have it do what you want. If you have [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) suite then you can open the excel file (not Excel 2007) and save the file as a csv file. A gem is currently being worked by Nathan Hale that can interface with [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org), this gem works only on Windows since it use WIN32OLEs to communicate with [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) via UNO COM interface. PS [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) is free and can replace Microsoft Office for most purposes. [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) works on Windows, MacOS, and Linus/Unix. Hope that helps. ---
**Author:** ![calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/edb3f5/32.png) [@calande](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/calande)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2007, 10:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-ruby-ole-1-2-3-released/124408/5 "2007-12-29T22:50:12Z")
On 12/28/07, Charles L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > ## No, its just an implementation of the underlying file format - just a container like a zip file (though without compression). See the parseexcel library for that purpose. > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). You could use this, however, to get the XBIFFx chunk (this is the format for the junk in the spreadsheet) from the compound document container. At the worst case, in the past the XBIFFx definitions etc have been made available on MSDN, so you would just need to develop a converter. (the ‘x’ is the version of Excel that is ref’d. XBIFF4 = Excel 4.0, XBIFF5 = Excel 5, and so on).