A new analytical method is proposed to analyze the force acting on a rectangular oscillating buoy due to linear waves.In the method a new analytical expression for the diffraction velocity potential is obtained first by use of the eigenfunction expansion method and then the wave excitation force is calculated by use of the known incident wave potential and the diffraction potential. Compared with the classical analytical method, it can be seen that the present method is simpler for a two-dimensional problem due to the comparable effort needed for the computation of diffraction potential and for that of radiated potential. To verify the correctness of the method, a classical example in the reference is recomputed and the obtained results are in good accordance with those by use of other methods,which shows that the present method is correct.