Automating and extending the various features of Microsoft Office is often done with the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and in the (relatively near) future, the .NET frameworks. But thing about VBA that's annoying is that it's usually bound within a specific file, like the current presentation, or your personal workbook's macros. Sharing that code with other people means passing copies of files around, and binding things to a specific file encourages fragile "look for this specific string here" type of coding.
Step in external automation. MS Office's VBA support also allows for access through the Common Object Model (COM) interfaces. Long story short, software that can access and use COM will be able to talk to Office. Enter Python (or some other language of your choice).
