To effectively train in simulation environments, all aspects of mission planning must be considered. This planning can occur in locations far from the simulation site, and can involve any of the following: development of the scenarios expected to be executed, preparation and generation of support products such as the operations orders, maps with overlays, execution matrices, and administrative orders, and initialization data parameters for both the equipment to be used and the simulated battlefield. Today's military planners are becoming increasingly computer literate, however, many trainers do not use simulations often enough to become familiar with the specific exercise planning interfaces used in their simulation environments. Although, simulation has moved much closer to the desktop, seamless initialization will require easier migration of common desktop tool produced products into the simulation. Familiarity of user interfaces for simulation planning and initialization tools can be achieved through the integration of desktop commercial off the shelf (COTS) products already in common use. Most exercise plans originate in COTS products such as Microsoft Office. These plans are then prepared for application to specific simulation environments. The process of exercise preparation is primarily a task of transposing the mission, overlays, and execution matrices from desktop formats into formats compatible with specific simulation environments and can become a time consuming process. Desktop software is now sophisticated and powerful enough to automate this translation of exercise plan information (documents) into simulation formats for exercise initialization. This process involves the transfer and integration of a simulation environment's object model into common desktop tools. The object model must be integrated with the planning tools so that through the course of exercise development, the plan may be captured in a format consistent with scenario generation. Initialization of Close Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT) exercise units, obstacles, and control measures from PowerPoint will be used as a practical example of this functionality. In particular, the paper will show how COTS products meet user requirements for an automated initialization tool and provide a uniform view of the training and simulation domains for both users and developers.