In a recent blog post Akash Mehta showed how to reach into a Microsoft document (a Word file) and pull out the content inside via a PHP script.

Communicating via COM in PHP is easy as ever; especially for people coming from a VB background where executing complex tasks in MS-applications is a piece of cake, you will feel right at home in PHP. In fact, VB COM calls can be converted to PHP COM calls in just a few simple search and replaces.

He shows how to use the COM extension in a (Windows) PHP installation to access the text inside the document and manipulate the contents however you'd like (even writing them back out to another Word file).

At times, working within the confines of a Microsoft world can be frustrating, especially when it comes to making more advanced versions of files (i.e. a "real" Excel file versus a CSV). In this example, Justin Silverton gives us an example of how to do just that - use PEAR to create an Excel 5 file.

He uses the Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer package to create the file without the need for getting COM in the mix. The package makes it simple to take in a dataset and write it out to a workbook - complete with column headers.

He shows two ways to save the file as well - creating a local file (on the web server) and pushing it out to the browser.

It's a simple introduction, but it's a starting place - especially for those with a project plan that requires it.