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AutomateIT!
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About

AutomateIT! is an open-source solution called to meet budgetary and business needs of primarily small and mid-sized companies. It automates the integration of OpenOffice with your existing software which exports reports or other data to Microsoft Office; therefore helps you optimize the costs on office automation and serves as an additional argument for switching to OpenOffice.

After AutomateIT! installation your financial, accounting or other specific office applications that export data to Microsoft Office applications will be exporting them to OpenOffice instead, all this without any changes to your software.

Thus, if you wish to cut IT spending, if you've learned the benefits of OpenOffice and would like to switch from Microsoft Office, AutomateIT! may be a helpful tool for you.

ApriorIT at the moment offers Free AutomateIT! Tuning for organizations that use OpenOffice. This will make AutomateIT! technology meeting all of your concrete needs.


Features

  • Exporting reports or other data to OpenOffice applications, instead of corresponding Microsoft Office applications
  • Support of OpenOffice 2.*
  • Support of Microsoft Office 9*, Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP

Benefits

  • AutomateIT! is an open-source product, so you can customize it freely under LGPL
  • There is one barrier less now for your switching to OpenOffice and saving on Microsoft Office
  • There is one barrier less now for your switching from Microsoft Office and exploring all the benefits and features of OpenOffice

AutomateIT! Pro Project Management Edition

AutomateIT! Pro Project Management Edition is the commercial version of AutomateIT! product supporting export operations of mindmapping and project management software.

With AutomateIT! Pro PME user get all benefits of the commercial software including support and upgrades - for extremely low price.

At the moment AutomateIT! Pro Project Management Edition supports such software products:

  • MindManager Pro version 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0;
  • Visual Mind 11 and higher;
  • ExportToExcel add-in for MindManager (product of I&AResearch Inc.)
  • Mind2Chart project management add-in for both MindManager and Visual Mind (product of Mind2Chart Team).

Download free trial or buy our product from its official page at Mind2Chart Team site.


How AutomateIT! works

A kind of clones of COM objects of Microsoft Office are being created - the objects themselves and function bodies are being replaced with new ones, which work with OpenOffice.

Tools we used while working on this project: Visual Studio 2003 and OLE/COM object viewer, Regmon for preliminary research.


What's new in 0.6-alpha

  • more Microsoft Excel methods and properties supported
  • OpenOffice 2.* support
  • handy separate tool for developers included - now you can log the calls of MS Excel methods performed by your application

What's new in 0.7-alpha

  • Installation is added.
  • Log creation is added. Now if user has some problems when exporting data than he can send log file to the Support and it will be fixed. Log is saved to the directory where AutomateIT! is installed.
  • Bugs with ExcelClone and WordClone are fixed.
  • Version has passed check on compatibility with such program as «Налогоплательщик ЮЛ».
  • Works on Windows Vista.

What's new in 0.9-alpha

Implementation of a number of Microsoft Office object methods is added.

Full comparative tables of properties and methods is here.

Some methods and properties are added in AutomateIT! 0.9.2 for the work with spreadsheets.

Updates for AutomateIT! 0.9.3:

  • Added Range::Address property.
  • Added Range::EntireColumn property.
  • Added Range::EntireRow property.
  • Fixed Range::Hidden property.
  • Fixed working with columns in OpenOffice 3.

AutomateIT! 0.9.4 includes new enhancements:

  • Support for Calc outline functionality is added.
  • Support for Named range functionality is added.
  • Several new Application, ExcelWindow, Range, Worksheet, Workbook methods are implemented.
  • Full EReport library support is added.

FAQ

Why you didn't implement the support of all Microsoft Office functions/methods/classes?

The creation of AutomateIT! had been inspired by a proof-of-concept program provided to Applianz Technologies, Inc. (http://www.applianz.com) and for this reason the product has limited functionality. However, we solved the most complex tasks. As people on the official OpenOffice forum said,

So you don't have the source code for [accounting application]? It's just a compiled .exe ? Well then there is nothing that you can do about it.

If I understand correctly, you want an application that is written to use the COM model to call Microsoft Office to use exactly that same API to call OpenOffice. If this is the case, then the answer is no.

Log file is not created. What should I do?

The following is good for both AutomateIT! OpenSource and AutomateIT! Pro.

Check AutomateIT! keys availability in the registry. You should find the following:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Application\CLSID

If these keys are absent or contain wrong values COM objects should be re-registered.

To do it please find ExcelClone.exe in the folder where AutomateIT! is installed and run ExcelClone.exe with the parameter /RegServer form the command line. Then the AutomateITLog.log log file will be automatically created in the AutomateIT! installation folder.

I've got the error message: "...". What does it mean?

There is a variety of reasons. "The server threw an exception" message can sometimes mean that support of currently called function/method/class isn't implemented in AutomateIT! yet. But this is only one of possible reasons. Please contact us in case of any problems or refer to your programmer or system integrator for help.

Should I make changes into my office/accounting applications, which export reports in Microsoft Office, in order to use your product?

No, you don't have to change something. All you need is just OpenOffice and AutomateIT! installed, but you probably have to adjust the last one to your needs. A programmer or system integrator can do this.

Can I redesign your product?

Of course. You always can download the latest release from the SourceForge.net page of our product. AutomateIT! has been released under the LGPL license, so please keep it.

A person with OpenOffice SDK knowledge, as well as COM and C/C++ will be able to improve the product.

I can't adjust your product to my needs. Can you help me?

At the moment we propose absolutely Free AutomateIT! Tuning. Feel free to contact us at if you have any questions. We will be glad to help you.


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Microsoft Office is a registered trademark of Microsoft Inc. OpenOffice is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc. and OpenOffice.org. SourceForge.net is a registered trademark of OSTG, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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