Can I use the Open XML SDK in Mono?

Question

Can the Open XML SDK be used in Mono?

Answer 1

Edit: It seems to be working in the meantime: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28322467/743897

Today (somewhere in 2011) I played around with the SDK and Mono 2.6.

First I checked what MoMA thinks of the dll:

4 different Methods in DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll need the following method from Mono which is not available. At least according to MoMA.

void XmlReaderSettings.set_MaxCharactersInDocument (Int64)

But I was brave and tried to do stuff.

The bad thing: It didn't really work well for me. I managed to create a very simple docx with the content "Hello World" and then load and read the file again. But as soon as I wanted to open user created and more complex documents stuff started to crash and break. There are some nasty Null Pointer Exceptions lurking around and sometimes the opened file even gets destroyed. Maybe because of the one missing method. It's a pity.

Conclusion: At the moment the OpenXML SDK from Microsoft is not usable with Mono.

Answer 2

As of 2014 the SDK has gone open source. So, an updated answer is yes, check this latest screencast.

and it has been merged into the latest version. check the pull request: https://github.com/OfficeDev/Open-XML-SDK/pull/3