Java libraries to read and write Excel XLS document files

Microsoft Excel spreadsheet files typically have a file extension of .xls. The newer versions of this format are subtypes of the Microsoft OLE 2 compound document file format, just like its fellow office file formats Word .doc and PowerPoint .ppt.

If you don't want to read and write this rather complex file format directly, you might also be successful exchanging data with Excel from your Java application by reading and writing simple text files that contain rows with tab- or comma-separated values (.csv). Java libraries for these replacement formats can be found in the Java data formats section of the Open Directory.

Excel is also able to access spreadsheet data from tables in in HTML files.

Library / package	License	Description
Actuate Spreadsheet Engine	Commercial, 30-day trial version available	Write Excel (XLS) files.
ExcelAccessor	?	Read and write Excel (XLS) files.
ExcelReader	?	JavaWorld article on how to read Microsoft Excel (XLS) files, including code. Requires an installed Microsoft ODBC driver for Excel files, and Sun's ODBC-JDBC driver.
ExtenXLS	Commercial, 30-day trial version available	Read and write Microsoft Excel (XLS) files.
JACOB project	LGPL	Java COM bridge with examples to interface Excel.
Java Excel API	LGPL	Read Excel (XLS) 97, 98 and 2000 files.
Java to Excel conversion	?	Write SYLK files, which Excel can import and export.
JExcel	Commercial	Swing component to integrate Excel via JNI.
jXLS	LGPL	Create Excel files using XLS templates.
POI	Apache Software License 1.1	Read and write Microsoft OLE 2 compound document format files. This includes MS Office files (DOC, XLS, PPT) written with Office versions that were released after 1997.
Snowbound	Commercial	Read Excel files.
SoftArtisans OfficeWriter	Commercial	Write Word and Excel files.
Vista JDBC	Commercial, 15-day trial version available	JDBC driver to access MS Excel (XLS) files.
xlSQL	GPL	JDBC driver to access MS Excel (XLS) and CSV files.

Java libraries to read and write PowerPoint PPT document files

The application PowerPoint is presentation software and a part of Microsoft Office. Its native file format has a file extension of .ppt. This page lists Java software to read and write PPT files.

Library / package	License	Description
Davisor Offisor	Commercial	Read Powerpoint (PPT) files. Can convert them to XML. 100% Java.
POI	Apache Software License 1.1	Read and write Microsoft OLE 2 compound document format files. This includes MS Office files (DOC, XLS, PPT) written with Office versions that were released after 1997.
Tonic Java PowerPoint Library	Commercial, demo available	Read, create and manipulate PowerPoint files. 100% Java. Also available is a free Java reader for PPT files.

Java libraries to read and write Word DOC files

Arguably the most popular file format for documents, simply because of the high market share of Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, the .doc file format changes with every new version of Word, so there is not a single Word file format but a number of them. Make sure to find out which version of Word your Java application will have to interface with.

Instead of dealing with the complicated Word DOC file format it is often sufficient to exchange RTF (Rich Text Format) files. RTF is more simple than DOC, well-documented and even supported in Java's standard runtime library since Java 1.2 (see the API documentation of the javax.swing.text.rtf package).

If you need to support .doc itself, here are some libraries for it.

Library / package	License	Description
SoftArtisans OfficeWriter	Commercial	Write Word and Excel files.
POI	Apache Software License 1.1	Read and write DOC files (only very basic support right now). POI is already covered on the Excel page: POI.
Java Bean Word Processing	Freeware	Read and write Word 97 and 2000 files. Needs a driver that runs only under Windows.
Davisor Offisor	Commercial	Reads Word files and transform them to XML. Pure Java solution.
RasterMaster	Commercial	Read Word files.