LINQ to XML: Use it with Office 2007 documents

Last couple of months I have been focusing on learning Language Integrated Query (LINQ). One flavor of LINQ is LINQ to XML, an extremely powerful XML API to query and transform XML data. One problem I had when learning LINQ to XML is that simple XML data like <Customer><Name>John Smith</Name></Customer> can only get you so far. Eric White mentioned in his blog that OpenXML(which is the underlying format for Office 2007) is a good source and provided some very good samples on using LINQ to XML to manipulate Office 2007 documents. With vast amount of data parking in Office documents, LINQ to XML should be a good tool for mining this valuable data source.

Here are some other good LINQ to XML tutorials:

• Query XML tree
  
• Pure functional transformation of XML
  
• How to retrieve Value of Element
  
• How to project Anonymous type
  
• How to filter an optional Element