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 <header>
  <title>Jakarta POI - HPSF - Java API to Handle Microsoft Format Document
   Properties</title>
  <subtitle>Overview</subtitle>
  <authors>     
   <person name="Rainer Klute" email="klute@apache.org"/>
  </authors>
 </header>
 <body>
  <section><title>Overview</title>

   <p>Microsoft applications like "Word", "Excel" or "Powerpoint" let the user
    describe his document by properties like "title", "category" and so on. The
    application itself adds further information: last author, creation date
    etc. These document properties are stored in so-called <strong>property set
     streams</strong>. A property set stream is a separate document within a
    <link href="../poifs/index.html">POI filesystem</link>. We'll call property
    set streams mostly just "property sets". HPSF is POI's pure-Java
    implementation to read and write property sets.</p>

   <p>The <link href="how-to.html">HPSF HOWTO</link> describes what a Java
    application should do to read a property set using HPSF, how to retrieve
    the information it needs, and how to write properties into the
    document.</p>

   <p>HPSF supports OLE2 property set streams in general, and is not limited to
    the special case of document properties in the Microsoft Office files
    mentioned above. The <link href="internals.html">HPSF description</link>
    describes the internal structure of property set streams. A separate
    document explains the internal of <link href="thumbnails.html">thumbnail
     images</link>.</p>
  </section>
 </body>
</document>

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