An Excel 2003 worksheet is open showing an Expense Statement Analysis report. The Getting Started task pane is open on the right side of the screen.

With the XML capabilities of Office Professional Edition 2003, you can create documents, connect to data sources, and retrieve and reuse information in innovative ways.

The scene changes back to the Excel worksheet. The pointer clicks Getting Started in the task pane on the right. A drop-down list appears, showing the available task panes, and the pointer clicks XML Source to open the XML Source task pane. The pointer clicks the XML Maps button, which opens the XML Maps dialog box, and then clicks Add to open the Select XML Source dialog box. The pointer selects an XML file, and then in the XML Maps dialog box, clicks OK.

In this case, I'm going to analyze data from expense reports that were provided to me in an XML format.

First I need to map (or attach) my XML schema file to the various cells in the spreadsheet.

I do this by going into the XML source task pane.

I select my XML file …

… and Excel automatically infers the schema from the structure in the XML document.

The pointer drags elements from the XML Source task pane to the corresponding cells in the worksheet — Employee Name, Employee ID, Department, ManagerName, Date, Account, Description, and Total. As the pointer drags each element onto the worksheet, each element fills a cell.

In this case, I'll drag the Employee Name, Employee ID, Department, and Manager Name elements onto my worksheet.

Excel will map these cells to the elements in my XML documents.

Now I'll add repeating elements to a list in my worksheet.

This time I'll drag the Date, Account, Description, and Total elements onto the worksheet.

I'm finished mapping the XML elements on my worksheet.