how can previous versions of office files be accessed using open xml sdk 2.0

Question

I suppose office files(prior MS office 2007) cannot be accessed using open xml sdk2.0 or if they cannot be programmatically accessed using the open xml format.

so is there any way to work or these older version files or can i view the xml content of these files. or is it that open xml sdk isnt designed for that purpose

Answer 1

See the answer to a similar question I asked when I just started learning this SDK.

Answer 2

No but the open source project POI provides an API to most of the old formats. Warning POI is a bit (not a lot) buggy, does not fully implement the specs, and support is catch as catch can (ie it's open source).

Answer 3

You can use Office File converters to convert to open xml formats and start processing it. See here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179019(v=office.14).aspx

I'm using this for my application. This works for me. Hope this helps.