It surprises me sometimes that so many Windows programmers are not using the .Net InterOp classes with MS Office. InterOp allows you to do so many things far easier and with builtin Intellisense to boot. Using techniques like ADO.NET to examine Excel spreadsheets for example is so outdated. They were the only way to get at the data back before VS 2005, but now, lets move forward. Use the InterOP!

Check out my elegant, it is my opionion, accepted answer to an Excel problem. Experts Exchange InterOp is king!

An even more powerful example of InterOp, is my answer to the following problem Experts Exchange.

I think it is awesome that InterOp gives you finer control over controlling an Office app programatically.