Question

I would like to be able to automate data entry to an Open Office spreadsheet using a PowerShell script, in the same way that Excel can be automated using PowerShell (see this Scripting Guy example). Is this possible?

Thanks, MagicAndi

Answer 1

It is possible using the UNO CLI bindings. Unfortunately Powershell does not cope well with proxy objects, so you need to use reflection. For example,

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('cli_basetypes')
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('cli_cppuhelper')
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('cli_oootypes')
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('cli_ure')
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('cli_uretypes')
$localContext = [uno.util.Bootstrap]::bootstrap()
$multiComponentFactory = [unoidl.com.sun.star.uno.XComponentContext].getMethod('getServiceManager').invoke($localContext, @())
$desktop = [unoidl.com.sun.star.lang.XMultiComponentFactory].getMethod('createInstanceWithContext').invoke($multiComponentFactory, @('com.sun.star.frame.Desktop', $localContext))
$calc = [unoidl.com.sun.star.frame.XComponentLoader].getMethod('loadComponentFromURL').invoke($desktop, @('private:factory/scalc', '_blank', 0, $null))
$sheets = [unoidl.com.sun.star.sheet.XSpreadsheetDocument].getMethod('getSheets').invoke($calc, @())
$sheet = [unoidl.com.sun.star.container.XIndexAccess].getMethod('getByIndex').invoke($sheets, @(0))
$cell = [unoidl.com.sun.star.table.XCellRange].getMethod('getCellByPosition').invoke($sheet.Value, @(0,0))
[unoidl.com.sun.star.table.XCell].getMethod('setFormula').invoke($cell, @('A value in cell A1.'))

You could also try AODL which should be much easier to use, but doesn’t look like it’s been updated recently.