title: Alternative to Office Interop for document generation
body: <p>At the moment we're using office interop to generate documents from templates in office 2003 (word, excel &amp; powerpoint). This seems to be rather frowned upon (see <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1031513/office-interop-with-64bit-windows-in-asp-net">office-interop-with-64bit-windows-in-asp-net</a>) and whilst it works fine I would be happier with a supported solution.</p>
  
  <p>What non hacky method is there to do this? Requirements are</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Office 2003 only. (No office xml / office 2007 compatability pack allowed)</li>
  <li>Must run server side from ASP.NET</li>
  <li>Must be able to create Word, Excel &amp; Powerpoint documents from user supplied .dot, .xlt and .pot templates</li>
  <li>Must be able to further customise the docouments by replacing certain text at certain points e.g. names, addresses etc</li>
  <li>Free or very low cost. I'm not going to be able to raise a purchase order to replace a working system on the grounds that four people on some website thought it was a dirty hack ;)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm not sure there is a better way. Is there?</p>