Is Microsoft Office necessary with OfficeWriter for Reporting Services?
With any edition of OfficeWriter, Microsoft Office is NOT required on the server. However, to design reports created by OfficeWriter, Excel AND Word are required on the client machines. To view reports client-side, Excel, Word or equivalent software like Open Office, is required. • The spreadsheets that I generate with Microsoft’s standard Excel rendering extension, which is included with Reporting Services (SP1), appear to be a “watered down” version of Excel. Why is this? “The “out of the box” Microsoft Excel renderer can only produce output that is based on the lowest common denominator between a static file (i.e. HTML or PDF) and an Excel file. This is due to the fact that the Excel features are interpreted from the XML structure of the report which has no facility to store advanced Excel features such as charts, pivot tables, VBA, etc. • How do I guarantee the publishing of full-featured Excel and Word reports? To enjoy dynamic spreadsheets that contain all Excel and Word features
