How to use POI

I am trying to write data into MS excel. I downloaded "poi-bin-2.5.1-final-20040804" from http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/
Than I set my Classpath to "C:\j2ee\POI" (this is where I have poi-2.5.1-final-20040804.jar, poi-contrib-2.5.1-final-20040804.jar and poi-scratchpad-2.5.1-final-20040804.jar)
When I use
import org.apache.poi.*;
HSSFWorkbook workBook = new HSSFWorkbook();

I get the following error.

BPM1.java:3: package org.apache.poi does not exist
import org.apache.poi.*;

Can anyone please help me to solve this?

Thanks in advance.

Kashyap

are you talking about writing/compiling a java application ?

you do not put direcetories on the classpath but the individual jar files. why dont you use an IDE ? perhaps you should learn the concepts of java first before trying to use POI...this was not advanced...

p

Pascal,
Sorry, I thought this to be advanced

.
I am writing a Java program where I must write into MS excel.
I tried searching in Google for good resource but couldn't find. Can you please let me know where I can learn basics about handling MS word and excel.

-Kashyap

So, did Pascals hint help you resolve the problem? The documentation of the Excel part of POI is on the web site, while the Word handling capabilities are no longer under development.

the "quick how-to" in poi is pretty good. used it to learn how to manipulate excel-sheets, and it all worked out pretty smoothly, if you dont try to do tooo complex stuff.

you will not find much more documentation in the web, at least i did not find much. the fact that "poi" has a meaning in spanish or so doesn't make it easier to google for it :-)

Thank you all for the help, I am able to use POI in my Java code.