eXpresso and Microsoft® Excel®

Excel is installed on an estimated 400 million PCs worldwide and there are literally billions of Excel spreadsheets in existence. Microsoft has invested decades of research and development into making Excel arguably the most used desktop application on the planet. Rather than creating a new spreadsheet application, eXpresso extends the spreadsheet management and community-based sharing capabilities of Excel through a combination of Microsoft's Office Web Components (OWC) and eXpresso's 'secret sauce'. Microsoft states that "the goal of Office Web Components (OWC) is to improve productivity by solving business problems. They are particularly well-suited for solutions [e.g. eXpresso] that share [Excel spreadsheet] data across teams or geographic regions and enabling team members to work together more easily."

eXpresso has taken Microsoft's goal to heart, added the best of Web 2.0, and by leveraging our patent pending multi-enterprise collaboration platform, created the most useful, most reliable, most secure, hosted system for managing spreadsheet communities in the world. eXpresso is 100% Excel compatible.

eXpresso makes interactive Excel spreadsheets available to users over the Internet using a Web browser. These interactive spreadsheets are parts of Web pages that reference the OWCs. Users with Microsoft Office and the OWCs installed on their PCs who access these spreadsheets through eXpresso get the fully interactive user experience. However, users who do not have Office or the OWCs installed will see a message indicating that they need to have the OWCs to view the data on the page.

Installing and Activating OWC

By clicking on the link to install, you will be directed to Microsoft's download center where the latest version of the OWCs can be downloaded for free.

After you download the Office Web Components, log back into eXpresso click on the yellow information bar that will appear below the browser's address line. Select the 'Run ActiveX Control' option to activate the OWC.

A dialog box will appear and you should select the "Run" option.  The browser will refresh and you will be able to view and edit your spreadsheets in eXpresso.

Why Excel?

1. It is our goal to be compatible with the great body of Excel spreadsheets that already exists in the global business community today.
2. For optimal productivity we want to leverage users' familiarity with Microsoft Excel.
3. Microsoft's Office Web Components are powerful web controls that preserve much of the power and interactivity of Excel and allow eXpresso developers to expand on its base functionality without sacrificing any of our innovative Web 2.0 functionality.

Software and licensing requirements

The following conditions need to be true in order for a user to have full interactive use of eXpresso:

• The user has a valid license for Microsoft Excel (2000, XP, 2003 or 2007) or other qualifying Microsoft product.
• Microsoft Office Web Components are installed on the user's computer.
• Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer version 5 or later is installed on the user's computer.
• The user is a registered eXpresso user (free or paid subscription).

Download Office Web Components (OWC)

• Download the latest version of the Office Web Components here

Microsoft support for Office Web Components (OWC)

Microsoft has shipped different versions of OWC in the three releases of Microsoft Office prior to Office 2007 (i.e. Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP, and Microsoft Office 2000). The Office Web Components do not ship with Office 2007, however they will continue to be supported per the Microsoft Product Life Cycle. This means that important bugs and security issues will continue to be addressed. The support time frame for OWC is defined in the table below:

Verify correct version of OWC being used by eXpresso

To verify that eXpresso is using the latest version of Office Web Components, click on the colored Microsoft logo in the upper-left corner of your spreadsheet control in eXpresso's Open Spreadsheet view: 

The current latest version of OWC is Version 12.x (e.g. 12.0.0.4518).

If you have successfully downloaded and installed the latest version of OWC and do not see Version 12.x displayed in the above window, send an email to for further assistance.