# Ruby module for editing open office files

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 6, 2006, 1:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672 "2006-04-06T01:35:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/beachguy82)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 1:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672/1 "2006-04-06T01:35:58Z")

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I’m having trouble finding a module to edit open office files. I know  
they are stored as xml inside a zip file, but I don’t want to have to  
roll my own solution unless necessary. There is oo4r but that hasn’t  
been updated in over 2 years and there is no documentation. Is there a  
more recent and or documented module that will let me edit open office  
documents?

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**Author:** ![beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/beachguy82)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 2:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672/2 "2006-04-06T02:09:21Z")

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Have you tried win32ole? If you have a decent OLE object browser you  
should be able to find what you need.

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**Author:** ![beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/beachguy82)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672/3 "2006-04-06T17:36:55Z")

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I think Charlie means [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) documents. How would win32ole do  
that?

I’m also interested in this. I may have a project or two coming up in  
the near future that will require me to do some automation with  
various OO.o documents, and I’d love to do the work in Ruby.

–

– AL –

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**Author:** ![beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/beachguy82)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672/4 "2006-04-06T18:31:02Z")

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charlie bowman wrote:

> I’m having trouble finding a module to edit open office files. I know  
> they are stored as xml inside a zip file, but I don’t want to have to  
> roll my own solution unless necessary. There is oo4r but that hasn’t  
> been updated in over 2 years and there is no documentation. Is there a  
> more recent and or documented module that will let me edit open office  
> documents?

This program is to convert odf (open document format) to xhtml. It might  
be a good starting point for what you want to do.  
[http://books.evc-cit.info/odf\_utils/ruby\_to\_xhtml.html](http://books.evc-cit.info/odf_utils/ruby_to_xhtml.html)

And this project  
[http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/](http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/)  
is able to output to odf.

Edwin

P.S. OpenOffice 2 and later uses odf as its default file format.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@beachguy82](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/beachguy82)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-module-for-editing-open-office-files/93672/5 "2006-04-06T18:20:13Z")

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Yes, I mean [OpenOffice.org](http://OpenOffice.org) documents. I know that oo4r is a possiblilty  
but since I can’t find a tutorial on using it, it will be pretty hard to  
get it working. I know the author frequents this list. Maybe he can  
shed some light on the status of oo4r and it’s compatibility with  
OpenOffice 2.0.