A Small trick: How to extract a BizTalk BAM definition from an Excel sheet without installing Excel client

This is a small trick that I have been doing for sometime now and wanted to share. The scenario is that you have prepared the BizTalk BAM definition and you ready to deploy it to the production environment, you run the bm.exe command and you see the situation; the BAM definition file is an Excel sheet and since you do not have Excel installed on the production server the installation has failed. Sad smile

The options you have are either to your back to your development environment and export the XML from the Excel sheet or to install Excel on the production environment (not really an option).

The trick is actually to open the Excel sheet in notepad as a normal text file and you would see something like this:

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WOW wait a minute this XML seems familiar, right?

Well you are correct this is the XML definition for the BAM view and activity. So simply copy this text and paste it in a new XML document and there you have it the XML definition of your BAM activity Smile

Happy BizTalking Winking smile