joseph dela cruz wrote:my question is what im trying to do really worth the trouble?
Only you can answer that. If you have to do it, you have to.
I guess my question to you is: Do you really need to have the Excel
data in your Java app, or do you just need to be able to look at it? If the latter, simplest might be to just plug a launcher into your GUI (ie, an icon for the Excel file that actually launches Excel itself when pressed).
is using a third party library with this kind of function good ? if yes what library you recommend ?
Unless you fancy writing your own Excel parser, you really don't have much choice but to use a 3rd party product; and there are only two basic ones that I know of:
Apache POI and OpenOffice/Lucene.
Of the two, the first is likely to be much quicker to learn, since it's focused directly on Excel; the latter will be a small part of a much larger API. You may be able to do more with OpenOffice though - although there are likely to be restrictions with both of them.
There is also
JExcelApi; but I've never used it, so I can't tell you how good it is.
The basic problem you have is that you're dealing with a proprietary format that is closely guarded by Microsoft; and basically, they don't want you looking at their stuff without paying them.
Winston