I discovered Apache POI for doing a lot with MS Office programmatically in Java, but its documentation leaves me wanting, as well as a few other things. Does a better alternative exist?
I thought to myself that OpenOffice.org might have something, but cannot find any concise site that would have a Library that would allow you to open and store Word, Powerpoint, Excel, or other MS Office applications through Java.
Do any better alternatives exist?
I think POI is the best among other libraries. I don't know the reason why you don't like it
HSSF is the POI Project's pure Java implementation of the Excel '97(-2007) file format. XSSF is the POI Project's pure Java implementation of the Excel 2007 OOXML (.xlsx) file format.
HWPF is the name of our port of the Microsoft Word 97(-2007) file format to pure Java. It also provides limited read only support for the older Word 6 and Word 95 file formats. The partner to HWPF for the new Word 2007 .docx format is XWPF. Whilst HWPF and XWPF provide similar features, there is not a common interface across the two of them at this time.