96 posts from: Eric Carter
VB Code Samples for the VSTO for Office 2007 Book Now Available
(Indexed 2009-11-18):
I wanted to make sure everyone knows that VB code samples for the VSTO for Office 2007 book are now available. You can download them here: http://www.informit.com/content/images/9780321533210/downloa...(truncated)... Long live VB![Image]
8. VSTO Bug Tracker : Using a Ribbon
(Indexed 2009-05-14):
To get started, from the Project menu choose Add New Item. In the Add New Item dialog box, click Ribbon (Visual Designer). Then click the Add button. A new Ribbon is created and the Ribbon Designer is displayed. Next, click on the Group control that is created for you and change the Label in the Properties window to Bugs as well. Drag and drop a Button control from the Toolbox onto the Group control. Use the Properties window to set the Label for the button to Add Bug Data. Also, s...(truncated)...
7. VSTO Bug Tracker : Using Document-Level Features in Add-Ins
(Indexed 2009-05-14):
Prior to Visual Studio 2008 SP1, you couldnt use common VSTO features like controls in the document and databinding to list objects at the add-in level. But with SP1 we introduced a way for you to use these features at the add-in level. In this section some of the wierd ways Idid things in section 4 will start to make more senseI designed the code in Section 4 to be easily portable to an add-in. One thing that wont port to the add-in level is cached datathat feature only works when ...(truncated)...
6. VSTO Bug Tracker: Word Report Generation
(Indexed 2009-05-14):
Another thing I want my bug tracking system to do is help me generate a weekly report with a summary table of key stats for all my teams. I want to do this in Word so I can add my own comments and a status summary of what went on during the week. We already prepared to build this Word report by writing the Web Service method GetDailyValues. Create a new Word document project in C# and call it BugDocument. If you start from a new document, follow the instructions below. If you want t...(truncated)...
5. VSTO Bug Tracker : Using Cached Data
(Indexed 2009-05-14):
We are now going to convert our previous sample to use cached data. In our current solution we have code that when the document loads, it calls a web service to get the bug data. We are going to use the cached data feature to allow us to call the web service at a different time to fill in the dataset in the document without having to start Excel. Why would we want to do this? Well, several reasons. First, we can improve the load time of our document by updating th...(truncated)...
4. VSTO Bug Tracker : Getting the data into Excel
(Indexed 2009-05-14):
The next step is to get more of the bug data into Excel so we can start to analyze it. To do this, we will use VSTOs data bind to ListObject support. Im going to approach this in a different more advanced way that will make sense later in the demo. Long time VSTO developer will know that the simple way to bind data to a list object in VSTO is to create an Excel Workbook project, add a data source, then drag and drop the data source onto the Excel Workbook. The problem with that approach ...(truncated)...
If you are using Windows 7 RC and VSTO you better read this
(Indexed 2009-05-08):
Saurabh blogs about how to work around an error you get if you published a VSTO solution using VS2008 on a machine running the Windows 7 RC and then you try to install the solution on any machine you will see the following error: The required version of the .NET Framework is not installed on this computer: http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2009/05/07/issues-with-in...(truncated)...
Advanced Word & Excel 2007 Development in Visual Studio 2008 with VSTO (OFC 324)
(Indexed 2009-05-06):
I will be at TechEd next week and will present a session on advanced VSTO: OFC324 Advanced Microsoft Office Word and Excel 2007 Development in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with Visual Studio Tools for Office Eric Carter Thursday 5/14/2009 1:00PM-2:15PM Room 515A My session will be a very demo heavy session and after the presentation, I will update this post to link to walkthroughs, code, and gotchas for all my demos. Here is what I plan to demo: [Image] UDFs in .NET for Excel ...(truncated)...
Creating a Research Service for Word 2007 in C# with Visual Studio 2008
(Indexed 2009-04-10):
This post examines how to build research services for Word and other Office applications. Word has a task pane called the Research task pane that enables you to enter a search term and search various sources for that search term. To display the Research task pane, click the Research button in the Review tab of Words ribbon. [Image] Office enables developers to write a special Web service called a research service that implements two Web methods defined by Office: Registration and Query. Both ...(truncated)...
VSTO Community Activities in Vienna
(Indexed 2009-03-25):
There are some great VSTO community activities going on in Vienna. Office Community Day is being held on May 8th in Vienna and is free. They will be covering: Introduction to VSTO OpenXML Deployment in VSTO SharePoint Workflows and more. Mario Meir-Huber and Lars Keller are driving this, and having spoken before with Mario, he knows his VSTO! The information page for the event is at http://www.vsto-taskforce.de[Image]
Content Control Event Model in Word 2007
(Indexed 2009-03-24):
New in Word 2007, content controls can be inserted into a document to provide more structure and controlfor example when you have a section of the document that you want to allow the user to put a picture into or pick a value from a drop-down list. There are eight content controls: rich text, plain text, picture, combo box, drop-down list, date picker, group, and building block gallery. These controls can be found in the Developer tab of Words Ribbon. The developer tab isnt displayed by default ...(truncated)...
Object Model Changes for Developers Between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007
(Indexed 2009-03-19):
There a lot of changes between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for developers. Here are some highlights that I found interesting in the object model. Note that you should use the trick I blog about in this post for more detailed comparisons. There is also a nice resource on MSDN to see object model changes here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb149069.aspx New Object Model Objects Excel 2007 introduces 51 new objects to the object model. These new objects are, listed alpha...(truncated)...
Changes in the Add-In Model between VSTO 2.0 and VSTO 3.0
(Indexed 2009-03-17):
It is instructive to compare code from the previous edition of my book to see what changed between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 as well as the changes to the add-in model between VSTO 2.0 and VSTO 3.0. This is a VSTO Outlook add-in that handles the ItemSend event and checks if there are more than 25 recipients to warn you that you are sending to a lot of people. Here is the VSTO 2.0 and Outlook 2003 version: using System; using System.Windows.Forms; using Microsoft....(truncated)...
Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007 Code Listings
(Indexed 2009-03-14):
The C# code listings for the VSTO 2007 book are attached to this post. I will also get them posted to the book site in the next several days. Enjoy![Image]
Attaching to an already running Office application from your application using GetActiveObject or BindToMoniker
(Indexed 2009-03-12):
One common pattern of Office development is the Office Automation Executablea console or windows forms application that starts up an Office application and talks to it. Sometimes you wont want to start a new instance of an Office application but will instead want to attach to an already running instance. To do this, you can use one of two methods provided by .NET. System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject allows you to attach to a running instance of an Office application by...(truncated)...
VSTO 3.0 Features What Features For What Office Applications?
(Indexed 2009-03-10):
With VSTO 3.0 in Visual Studio 2008, there are a lot of new features and it can be a bit of a challenge to keep track of whats enabled for what application. The table below comes from my new book and shows the Office 2007 applications that are supported by VSTO 3.0 and the various VSTO features that are enabled for each Office application. In general, VSTO has the most features and support for Word, Excel, and Outlook. VSTO 3.0 Features That Are Enabled For Each Office 2007 Application ...(truncated)...
Getting VSTO Projects to Build Without Installing Visual Studio
(Indexed 2009-03-06):
I stumbled upon a couple of good posts about getting VSTO projects to build on a continuous integration machine that doesnt have Visual Studio installed on it. Unfortunately we do not make this very easy to do, but these bloggers provide some help: Rinat Abdullins post is here: http://abdullin.com/journal/2009/2/17/building-vsto-solution...(truncated)... Kent Boogaart has a post here: http://kentb.blogspot.com/2008/08/building-vsto-projects-wit...(truncated)... And Stephen Griffin has a po...(truncated)...
New VSTO 3.0 and Office 2007 Book Hot off the Presses
(Indexed 2009-03-03):
Im excited to announce that I have completed a new book on VSTO 2008 and Office 2007 that is hot off the presses. I just got a copy in the mail and as my editor said, its a big baby, 1055 pages of VSTO 3.0 goodness. This book was an interesting experience. At first the publisher thought it would be just a 2nd edition of the first VSTO book, but it quickly became clear that there was no way you could cover Office 2003 and Office 2007 development in the same book (so if you are doing ...(truncated)...
Version2003 Version2007?
(Indexed 2008-10-16):
Saw a weird bug in VSTO this weekend as I was setting up a new home machine (Quad corewoohoo!). After I installed VSTO, I got this in the new projects dialog:[Image]Version2003 and Version2007 were displayed rather than 2003 and 2007.Turns out that this can happen if you install Vista, then install Visual Studio, then install Vista SP1which I did. The fix for this if you want to get back to the expected 2003 and 2007 labels is to launch the Visual Studio Command Prompt and run devenv.exe /setu...(truncated)...
Another Cool Outlook Post--Disabling Reply To All & Forward
(Indexed 2008-08-21):
Scott Hanselman blogs on a simple VSTO Outlook add-in to disable the Reply To All and Forward buttons in Outlook.[Image]
Dynamically Creating a VSTO Worksheet in Visual Studio 2008 SP1
(Indexed 2008-07-28):
One additional problem commonly encountered in the VSTO document programming model is how to attach code and data bindings to dynamically created worksheet objects. The new GetVstoObject feature described in the previous blog post can also be used in document projects to dynamically create a VSTO host item for a worksheet. Make sure your ThisWorkbook.cs file has the following line of code added at the top of the file with the other using statements: using Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Extension...(truncated)...
Using VSTO Document Features in Application-Level Add-Ins
(Indexed 2008-07-24):
One commonly asked for feature in VSTO is the ability to use Word document and Excel workbook features in Application-level add-in projects. Starting with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, there is now a mechanism to use many of the document-level features in your application-level add-in projects. Using this new mechanism, you can get a VSTO host item object for a document, worksheet, or workbook from a PIA object like Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet, or ...(truncated)...
Creating Application-Level Smart Tags in VSTO
(Indexed 2008-07-09):
VSTO’s document-level Smart Tags are great when you want to recognize a term in a particular document or a class of document created from a template. What are your options when you want to recognize a term in all open documents? Starting with VSTO 3.0 SP1, (beta is available here) you can create a VSTO add-in that can access the document level VstoSmartTags collection. This now allows you to use all the features of document-level VSTO Smart Tags at the add-in level. To use document level ...(truncated)...
Seeking feedback on VBA if you are at TechEd this month
(Indexed 2008-06-03):
Do you use VBA (or any other extensibility mechanism) in Office and are you headed to TechEd? If so the we would like to talk with you in an "invitation only" meeting. This is your chance to share your feedback and influence the work that Microsoft is doing in the programmability space. You must be available for either: TechEd Dev: Held at 4:30 on Thursday, June 5th TechEd ITPro: Held at 3:00pm on Monday, June 9thIf interested, please respond to the following questions to amandas...(truncated)...
How to Keep Visual Studio from Trying To Upgrade Office 2003 Projects
(Indexed 2008-05-28):
Tony Crider blogs on how you can get Visual Studio to stop bugging you to upgrade an Office 2003 project on a machine where you have Office 2007 installed.[Image]
In the category of interesting add-ins for Word...it's Linktacular
(Indexed 2008-05-13):
A VSTO add-in for Word that hyperlinks all the acronyms you've used in a Word document (and defined in a dictionary file) to Wikipedia or alternate links. http://blog.focas.net.au/2008/05/11/WikipediaiseACVSTOWordAddin.aspx I thought of Amanda Silver on my team when I saw this as I recently received a mail from her that would have taken me days to read had I followed all the link-tacularness.[Image]
Office Development While You Workout
(Indexed 2008-05-09):
Harry Miller has done a really cool series of podcasts that you can download and listen to while you workout, drive, etc. See http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2008/04/17/office-develop...(truncated)... Super cool.[Image]
Inter-AddIn Communications
(Indexed 2008-05-08):
This is an important article to read if you've every wondered about how to get add-ins you've written to talk to other add-ins loaded in the same Office process. http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2008/05/07/calling-into-a...(truncated)... Basically, it involves the callee Add-in overriding RequestComAddinAutomationService to provide an object that caller add-ins can talk to. Then the caller add-in uses the ComAddins collection off of Office Application object to find the callee add-in i...(truncated)...
Getting My Head Around Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Object Model Changes
(Indexed 2008-05-07):
I'm trying to get my head around all the changes in the Outlook 2007 object model. Some good resources are found on MSDN: New Objects, Collections, and Enumerations New Members and Constants Object Model Changes Since Microsoft Office 2003 Developer Issues When Upgrading Solutions to Outlook 2007 Also, this may be helpful to someone out there. I created two idl files, one with the Outlook 2003 object model and one with the Outlook 2007 object model. I sorted the idl files...(truncated)...
VBA and VSTO Can Be Friends (Part III)
(Indexed 2008-05-05):
When we last left our heroes: We created a word document, turned on the developer tab, and recorded a macro into the word document called MyMacro We worked with the trust center to make c:vstotemp a trusted location including subfolders. We saved our word document to c:vstotempvstoandvba.docm by picking save as and saving in the macro-enabled file format (docm extension) Let's now add some VSTO code to vstoandvba.docm and see how VSTO can call VBA code. Launch Visual Studio 2008 and choo...(truncated)...
Deploying VSTO 2008 add-ins to all users (continued)
(Indexed 2008-04-26):
Misha blogs again, this time about how to install a VSTO 2008 add-in to all users on a machine. Deploying your VSTO 2008 Add-In to All Users (Part III)[Image]
VBA and VSTO Can Be Friends (Part II)
(Indexed 2008-04-25):
VBA code can easily be called from VSTO. Here are the basic steps. Create a document with VBA code in it. Declare a public function or subroutine in the VBA code behind the document. Figure out a trusted location to create a VSTO project from Create a new VSTO project using the document with the VBA code in it--be sure to create the project in a trusted location. From VSTO code, write the code "Me.Application.Run("MethodName", param1, param2, ...) So let's walk through th...(truncated)...
VSTO 2008 Case Studies
(Indexed 2008-04-23):
Slavishly copied from John Durant's blog, I hadn't seen these before so I thought I'd pass them one. They are two case studies showing how CME Group and Dell used Visual Studio 2008 and the new features of VSTO in their solutions. CME Group Link to Case Study Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Windows Server 2003 Ent...(truncated)...
Video on VSTO Power Tools
(Indexed 2008-04-22):
There's a nice intro video to the VSTO Power Tools we recently released on Channel 9. Hopefully when i get a little more time, I'll be able to blog a bit more about these tools. For now, check out the video intro: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=397787#397787[Image]
VBA and VSTO Can Be Friends (Part I)
(Indexed 2008-04-21):
One of the cool new features of VSTO 3.0 is better support for what I would term "Extending VBA with VSTO". Our strategy here and what we recommend to customers is that we aren't going to try to migrate all your VBA code to VSTO--this is a bit of an unsolvable problem to get 100% right. Instead, what we want to enable is to allow you to take your existing VBA solutions and add to them with VSTO and .NET.Why would you want to do this?Well, there are a ton of developer technologies in .NET that ...(truncated)...
OBA Sample Application for PeopleSoft
(Indexed 2008-04-18):
During Kurt DelBene’s keynote at Collaborate 08 the OBA Sample Application Kit for PeopleSoft—a new addition to the small family of OBA Sample Application Kits—was announced This kit was designed for developers and architects to download the kit and learn how they can integrate Outlook 2007 and MOSS 2007 with PeopleSoft. You can download the kit directly here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/obapsftsak. You can alternatively visit our new OBA Sample Application Kit...(truncated)...
How Do I Get My VSTO Add-in for Office 2007 to Install for All Users?
(Indexed 2008-04-17):
This is a common question with VSTO 3.0 add-ins. Office only allows VSTO add-ins to be registered under HKCU in the registry which means they can only be installed for the user that runs your add-in setup on their account, not available to all users on a machine after you run the installer under one account. There are some reasons for this behavior--in general it is better to not install for all users unless you absolutely have to as it requires an elevation of privilege to write to HKLM ...(truncated)...
ApplicationClass Needn't Be Avoided
(Indexed 2008-04-16):
Geoff Darst--an engineer on our team--sent this to me a while back and I think it would be good to pass it on. I still think in general people avoid using ApplicationClass because it makes your code look like the VBA and VB6 code everyone is familiar with. But Geoff points out that there is no need to explicitly avoid ApplicationClass. You may need to revisit the blog post he refers to in order to get the context where his comments make sense. I just stumbled on your blog post ta...(truncated)...
How to get VSTO ClickOnce add-ins to "Update Now"
(Indexed 2008-04-15):
Kristopher Makey, an engineer on my team, blogs about how to add an "Update Now" button to get a VSTO add-in to force an update. Unfortunately it's a bit of a hack for now, but if you really need to add this functionality (a button the user can use while the app is running to force an update) at least this should get you unblocked. You can also set the add-in to check for updates every time it is launched by using the Updates.. button in the Publish tab of the project properties. In...(truncated)...
Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map v.2
(Indexed 2008-04-14):
Something to check out if you haven't seen it yet. This was released earlier this year. http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/devmap The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that helps developers visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them build solutions. It allows them to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas req...(truncated)...
Why are there two design time adaptors loading in Excel 2007
(Indexed 2008-04-10):
So, while running Excel 2007 with VSTO installed, you may have noticed that there are two design time adaptors registered, one for Excel 2003 and one for Excel 2007: [Image] I asked one of our engineers, Richard Cook, to give me a run down of why we do this. I think it is interesting from an engineering tradeoffs perspective. This has always been the case since we started supported both Office 2003 and Office 2007 in Visual Studio 2008. The VSTO design time installs a design-time ada...(truncated)...
VSTO Outlook Add-in Talks and Obeys Your Commands
(Indexed 2008-04-09):
If you haven't checked this out yet, it is worth looking at. Nathan Carlson, a developer on my team, created a VSTO Outlook Add-in that can read your mail using voice synthesis and also responds to voice commands. You can download the source code here. The sample demonstrates: Basics of developing an Outlook 2007 Add-in. Consuming Outlook events. Accessing e-mails. Creating a Custom Action for Outlook rules. Using Speech Synthesis. Using Speech Recognition. I had n...(truncated)...
VSTO Team Blog has Moved
(Indexed 2008-04-08):
The VSTO team blog has moved to http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto , and the RSS feed is http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/rss.xml. The team blog is an interesting source of insider information on VSTO, I'd encourage you to subscribe. Some cool recent posts over there: Developing an add-in for multiple versions of Office (Mary Lee) Share a Ribbon Customization between Office Applications (Norm Estabrook) New Power Tools - Ribbon IDs Tool Window (Kemp Brown) Aggregating blogs in a blog (Mary Lee) Deployin...(truncated)...
VSTO Runtime Versions Explained
(Indexed 2008-04-07):
Andrew Whitechapel posted a great article explaining the multiple versions of the VSTO runtime. http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww/archive/2008/04/02/vsto-loader...(truncated)... One anecdote that I find entertaining--the original VSTO runtime was code named White Rabbit. All the interface names were prefaced with "IWR" for White Rabbit as well. In the Office source code, the developer that wrote the integration of the White Rabbit runtime into Office has a comment next to the line of code t...(truncated)...
Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET
(Indexed 2008-04-04):
I updated a very popular blog post I made several years ago with some little additions and corrections that I think make the process of creating a user defined function (e.g. a custom function to use in Excel formulas) easier to create in Visual Studio and .NEThttp://blogs.msdn.com/eric_carter/archive/2004/12/01/wri...(truncated)... are the major changes to the article:1) I've decided to recommend that you use the Guid attribute and generate a GUID using Generate GUID from Visual Studio Tools me...(truncated)...
Communicator VSTO Add-in for Outlook
(Indexed 2008-04-04):
Michael Dunn posted a cool VSTO add-in for Outlook that integrates Outlook and Communicator. All the code is there as well. The add-in puts the communicator window inside of Outlook in a task pane. [Image][Image]
VSTO Book now available in Chinese
(Indexed 2008-04-03):
Jie Wang shared these photos with me of the VSTO book now translated into Chinese. Thanks to Jie Wang (in the photo) for his work on this book as well as Mei Liang who wrote a review for the book. [Image][Image][Image]
Fun with OLEView to Discover What's New in Office 2007
(Indexed 2008-03-28):
I'm working on a revision to my book for Office 2007 and one of the things I did for the original book that I'm now doing again is looking at the object model and seeing what things changed between versions of Office--in this case between Office 2003 and Office 2007. I'm going to post several articles on the "fun" things you can do to explore the object models. One of the simplest things to do is to dump the type libraries as IDL files (a format used to specify the COM interfaces and cocl...(truncated)...
VSTO Power Tools
(Indexed 2008-02-22):
We've just announced a cool set of power tools for VSTO 3.0. These are some really cool add-ons to VSTO that let you do a variety of things from dealing with the optional parameter problem in C# to editing Open XML package files inside of VS to LINQ enabling some parts of the Office object model. Andrew Whitechapel has a description of the tools here.[Image]
Webcast with Ken Getz talking VSTO
(Indexed 2007-10-09):
A great .NET Rocks! webcast featuring Ken Getz talking about VSTO 3.0. http://perseus.franklins.net/dotnetrocks_0279_ken_getz.mp3 The VSTO discussion starts at about 15 minutes in. Some gratuitous quotes: "These folks have just done an amazing job" "For VS 2008, they've made incredible strides... I think they'll finally hit critical mass with this fourth version" “Things that were incredibly hard are now very easy” “My jaw dropped when I saw how easy it is to cre...(truncated)...
In the "you never know what they're going to build" category
(Indexed 2007-10-08):
A ribbon add-in for Word written using VSTO (Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2) that displays baseball scores in a ribbon button. http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=10825[Image]
IPictureDisp and System.Drawing.Image
(Indexed 2007-07-31):
Check out this great post by Andrew Whitechapel on this issue which comes up all the time in Office development when working with toolbars and ribbons: Converting between IPictureDisp and System.Drawing.Image[Image]
Outlook Extensions Made Easy With Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
(Indexed 2007-07-27):
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is available today and with it, a new age of Office development begins. Visual Studio Professional 2008 now includes all the Office projects previously only in the Visual Studio Tools for Office or Visual Studio Team System products. So now everyone can build extensions for Office. Now that the Office projects are available throughout the Visual Studio offerings, a new set of developers will be approaching Office development for the first time. For that audience and...(truncated)...
Great News for Outlook Developers
(Indexed 2007-07-26):
Great news for Outlook developers--Microsoft has just an online reference and guide to the Outlook 2007 PIAs. This is the first time there has been a PIA reference for Outlook. The reference includes a lot of helpful "How To" segments which show you how to do common tasks with the Outlook object model. You can access it online from the link below, or if Visual Studio is set to use MSDN online help, pressing F1 when over an Outlook property, method, event, or object will bring up the help as w...(truncated)...
VSTO Deployment Gets Easy
(Indexed 2007-05-26):
Paul Stubbs blogs about how easy we made deployment in VSTO Orcas. http://blogs.msdn.com/pstubbs/archive/2007/05/17/vsto-my-fav...(truncated)... We got rid of our dependency on caspol and now have a version independent policy store. We now use ClickOnce including the ClickOnce cache. We do automatic update checking on an interval specified by the developer so you can publish your add-in to the web and users can get updates automatically. We support web site, UNC shares, or CD/removable stor...(truncated)...
I got my VSTO in your VBA--no you got your VBA in my VSTO
(Indexed 2007-05-10):
Check out a screen cast on channel 9 that shows how VSTO Orcas will enable you to easily create solutions that mix existing VBA code with new VSTO code. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=306413#306413[Image]
VSTO Live Search
(Indexed 2007-04-25):
Paul Stubbs has created a cool little custom Windows Live search page that searches VSTO related blogs and documentation to get you an answer on VSTO quickly.http://search.live.com/macros/pstubbs/vsto Check it out![Image]
A VSTO-Powered Outlook and Flickr Mashup
(Indexed 2007-04-18):
I briefly mentioned a demo app built within my team that integrates Outlook with Flickr (I think I mis-identified it as Facebook in the original post). It's in that category of apps that I'm not sure the "OBA" label fits but is more of a convenient mashup of Outlook and web services. This was developed by Adam Wilson who is doing an internship on the VSTO team right now. It is pretty simple. First it extends the contact view in Outlook by adding an adjoining form region at the bottom of the c...(truncated)...
Getting Ribbon XML Intellisense in VSTO 2005 SE
(Indexed 2006-11-10):
Here's a tip--to get Ribbon XML Intellisense working in VSTO 2005 SE, copy the file program filesmicrosoft visual studio 8XmlSchemas1033CustomUI.xsd to the folder C:program filesmicrosoft visual studio 8XmlSchemasHappy Ribbon Hacking![Image]
The launch of VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications)
(Indexed 2006-11-09):
KD Hallman, general manager of my team, announced today the availability of Visual Studio Tools for Applications--a "modern, scalable, and more secure version of VBA". I quote her forum post below:I am excited to announce that Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) was released as an integrated component of the 2007 Office system earlier this week and is available to both Office developers and ISVs! As Microsoft's future direction in application extensibility, VSTA provides a powerful cus...(truncated)...
Virtual Side Video Talking About VSTO 2005 SE
(Indexed 2006-11-08):
Here's a video I taped at TechEd about VSTO 2005 SE for the "Virtual Side"--a kind of channel9 style video series they're doing here in Barcelona. http://www.mseventseurope.com/Teched/06/Pre/Live/VideoDev5.aspx[Image]
Using BindingNavigator in VSTO
(Indexed 2006-11-08):
So it seems like I'm continually doing a VSTO demo in Excel where I add a data source (Northwind usually) and show how you can drag and drop from the data sources window into an Excel spreadsheet to show a customer and the orders a customer has made. The fields about the customer (name, address, phone) are added as simple data bindings to Excel ranges and the orders a customer has made is added as a list object. Then I usually drag and drop a button onto the spreadsheet and write code like thi...(truncated)...
Using WPF controls inside a VSTO ActionsPane or CustomTaskPane
(Indexed 2006-11-07):
Mario Szpuszta showed a cool demo yesterday with WPF controls inside a VSTO 2005 ActionsPane for a Excel document. I was inspired by his presentation to go figure out how to display a WPF control in a CustomTaskPane for a VSTO 2005 SE Add-in project.First, you have to have a bunch of stuff installed. Start with an installation of Visual Studio Professional or higher and Office 2007.Next, Install VSTO 2005 SE for Office 2007:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyi...(truncated)....(truncated)...
VSTO 2005 Second Edition available for download now! Eric Rudder Keynote at TechEd
(Indexed 2006-11-07):
Just came from Eric Rudder's keynote. Office & VSTO were featured in the main keynote demo. Eric Rudder announced the availability of VSTO 2005 SE for download now! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5E8...(truncated)... The keynote demo was around software for a fashion company that designed clothing and sells it on the web. As part of the demo, a VSTO 2005 SE add-in loaded into Excel 2007. The add-in provided a custom task pane (app-level) that was used to generate p...(truncated)...
Off to TechEd Barcelona
(Indexed 2006-11-03):
So I'm heading out to TechEd in Barcelona tomorrow. We will be launching VSTO 2005 SE there and I'll try to blog while I'm there.I'm participating in 3 sessions listed below.Also, I think I just did the most geeky thing I've done for a while in preparing for this trip. I just reimaged my home machine to install Windows Vista on it and I haven't yet installed Office. My wife has this handy "packing checklist" in excel that I wanted to print, but I didn't have a copy of excel to open the file. ...(truncated)...
Simple Outlook 2007 VSTO 2005 SE add-in that shows ItemContextMenuDisplay and Table usage
(Indexed 2006-10-09):
Someone on the team was looking to use VSTO 2005 SE to display a context menu in Outlook 2007 when you right-click on a mail item to delete all related mail items. I put together some quick and dirty code that shows how to do this. The interesting things here I think is the new Outlook 2007 ItemContextMenuDisplay event and the use of the new Outlook 2007 table object. You can read more about the table object here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms772423.aspx. Also, this add-in doesn...(truncated)...
Articles on VSTO 2005 SE
(Indexed 2006-10-09):
Jesse posted a comment which is worth elevating to a blog post:"Hey, read your VSTO C# book (all 1000 pages), and loved it--really helped jumpstart my current Word 2003 customization project. Anyhow, I checked out those videos, and they weren't really brimming with useful information. Two Microsoft papers credited to Andrew Whitechapel are extremely useful to people like me who use VSTO v2 and want to learn more about the design and use of VSTO v3:VSTO 2005 SE Design (http://go.microsoft.com/?li...(truncated)...
Channel9 on VSTO SE
(Indexed 2006-09-22):
There are two new videos posted to Channel 9 about VSTO Second Edition, one from Thomas Quinn an architect on the VSTO team, and the other from Martin Sawicki, program manager extraordinaire.VSTO 2005 Second Edition Beta- Thomas QuinnVSTO 2005 Second Edition Beta- Martin SawickiAlso, a small comment on VSTO Second Edition. Some have assumed that VSTO second edition is a super set of VSTO 2005 as the name kind of implies. This is not the case. You will want to have both VSTO and VSTO second ed...(truncated)...
Offline and the "CONFIG FILE" Issue
(Indexed 2006-09-22):
A reader posted this question to me:"I developed an Outlook plugin...I add the application manifest file in my setup project and deployed on client machine and published it on a deployment server. the problem is that when deployment server is online it works fine but when deployment server is offline, my outlook addin is not loaded." Misha helped me figure this one out. Misha's response to the reader was: "Did you see this part of the documentation which says that .config file is required for o...(truncated)...
Offline and the "CONFIG FILE" Issue
(Indexed 2006-09-22):
A reader posted this question to me:"I developed an Outlook plugin...I add the application manifest file in my setup project and deployed on client machine and published it on a deployment server. the problem is that when deployment server is online it works fine but when deployment server is offline, my outlook addin is not loaded." Misha helped me figure this one out. Misha's response to the reader was: "Did you see this part of the documentation which says that .config file is required for o...(truncated)...
VSTO 2005 Second Edition Beta: Add-ins for Office 2007 and Office 2003
(Indexed 2006-09-14):
So the big announcement today--ok, excluding the announcement of Zune and Wii--is the availability of the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical refresh and the beta of VSTO 2005 Second Edition (SE). First of all, I'm currently using Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh in all my everyday work and it is pretty great. Now, you can also download VSTO 2005 SE and it installs right on top of VSTO 2005 and works with Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh so you can start developing against Office 2007. Also (a...(truncated)...
On-demand webcast on VSTO Offerings for Office 2007
(Indexed 2006-08-23):
You can now view the webcast I gave this month talking about VSTO futures in particular the future releases of VSTO that can be used to do Office 2007 development. I talk about VSTO 'Cypress' which is the next release of VSTO that will ship simultaneous with Office 2007 and will install on top of VSTO 2005. I also talk about VSTO 'Orcas' which will have more advanced features for targeting Office 2007. I also do some basic demos of both products--not too advanced but it should give you a basic ...(truncated)...
Guest Post by Iouri Simernitski: Inserting an image into a Word file from VSTO
(Indexed 2006-08-02):
Editor's note: This is a guest post by Iouri Simernitski, a developer on the VSTO team.Recently someone asked how to insert an image into a Word file from the VSTO DLLs resources. There are several ways of doing this:Saving the image to a temporary file and using InlineShapes.AddPicture (youd need to delete the file afterwards) Saving the image to the clipboard and pasting it into the document (you will lose the previous contents of the clipboard) Inserting a PictureBox control with the picture...(truncated)...
Office Developer Conference Videos now on the Web!
(Indexed 2006-07-31):
Didn't get to go to the Office Developer Conference this year? Well, good news, all the videos of the conference are now on the web at http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/learn/conferences/default.aspxHere are the VSTO specific sessions:CD308Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office: Overview and Application-Level Add-ins Presenter: Andrew Whitechapel; 67 minutes (187 MB) Find out whats coming up in VSTO v3, and learn to create application-level add-ins, application-level task panes, and custom ribbons....(truncated)...
How to deploy, setup, install, configure, and otherwise get your VSTO solutions onto users machines
(Indexed 2006-07-25):
I don't ever remember blogging about this and it strikes me as a huge omission from this site. If you are trying to figure out how to get a VSTO solution deployed on an end user machine using an installer, you have to read this great whitepaper put together by the VSTO team.See http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/tool/vsto/2005/article/defa...(truncated)... addition to explaining a lot of the issues you will run into, this article provides a download that enables your installer to check for pre-re...(truncated)...
Interviewing and "Being Excellent"
(Indexed 2006-07-10):
Ade Miller, a development lead on my team, has a nice blog entry about interviewing for a job at Microsoft.Like Ade, I am also frustrated by candidates that appear to come into an interview completely unprepared. There is a pattern of preparation you should follow in my opinion: day to day preparation, followed by some good cramming before the interview. My pattern of preparation is kind of based on my college habits. In college I was an English major. During the semester I would do all the ...(truncated)...
Updated Office Citizens List
(Indexed 2006-06-27):
I've updated my list of Office Citizens that have blogs you should check out. My list of links is now as follows. I'm sure there are more I should add--any blogs you find particularly useful for either VSTO or Office Development?VSTO 1.0 VSTO 2.0 Eric Lippert John Durant Misha Shneerson Andrew Whitechapel Kathleen McGrath Paul Stubbs Thomas Quinn Want to work on the VSTO team?[Image]
COM Shim Wizard for IDTExtensibility (Shared Addins) Now Available for Visual Studio 2005
(Indexed 2006-06-23):
I've blogged before about the need for shimming non-VSTO shared managed add-ins. Misha Shneerson and Andrew Whitechapel created a COM Shim Wizard that worked with Visual Studio 2003. They've now updated the wizard and it is available on MSDN. Article URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/...(truncated)... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=300...(truncated)... should use this shim wizard if you are building shared IDTExtensibility2 based add-in...(truncated)...
VSTO Troubleshooter Tool
(Indexed 2006-06-22):
If you've ever had trouble getting a VSTO solution running on a machine, there is now a tool that can help you out.http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId...(truncated)... Microsoft PSS VSTO 2005 Client TroubleShooter tool is an application designed to help diagnose potential client-side issues when you deploy a VSTO 2005 solution. The tool scans the client computer for the prerequisites required to run a VSTO 2005 solution and reports the state of the prerequisites in the form ...(truncated)...
VSTO v3 CTP and WinFX Beta 2
(Indexed 2006-06-21):
Some of you have asked how to get the VSTO v3 CTP (available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/future) working on a machine with WinFX Beta 2. Thomas Quinn blogs about how to get this to work here:http://blogs.msdn.com/tq/archive/2006/06/06/620048.aspxAlso, although I've heard reports of people getting the VSTO v3 CTP running on the Windows Vista beta, this isn't a scenario we've had time to test very much yet, so use at your own risk.Want to work on the VSTO team?[Image]
A VSTO release to support Office 2007 will ship this year--a free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 called "Cypress"
(Indexed 2006-06-09):
KD Hallman, the General Manager for the Visual Studio Tools for Office team, just announced Cypress. Cypress is a free update to VSTO that adds support for Office 2007 development and it will ship when Office 2007 ships this year. It is an add-on that will install right on top of your existing Visual Studio 2005 installation and give you new projects to target Office 2007. You can find more details about Cypress in KD's MSDN Forum posting at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID...(truncated)...
VSTO 'v3' CTP for Office 2007 Beta 2
(Indexed 2006-05-24):
The VSTO 'v3' CTP for Office 2007 Beta 2 is available now. Start playing with Office 2007 development and the next version of VSTO today.First you need to get Office 2007 Beta 2: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx Then go get the VSTO 'v3' CTP for Office Beta 2--this is an add-on that installs on top of an existing VS 2005 install: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=689...(truncated)... fun![Image]
VSTO Solutions wanted for compatibility testing
(Indexed 2006-05-05):
We are currently looking for real-world applications built with Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (or the previous version: Visual Studio Tools for Office, version 2003) that we can use to test compatibility with the next version of VSTO. Were primarily interested in your deployed applications to run our compatibility tests (not the source code). You should only share apps with us that don't contain any sensitive data. If you have applications youd like to share with us, please contact us at v...(truncated)...
Creating a Ribbon for Access with VSTO 'v3' CTP and Office 12 Beta 1 Technical Refresh
(Indexed 2006-05-04):
Kathleen has posted another video showing the VSTO 'v3' CTP and how to create a VSTO add-in that creates a ribbon for Access of all things! http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/archive/2006/05/04/590108.aspxThere's still a bit of rocket science involved here--in the final version of VSTO 'v3' we'll make it much easier and more "RAD" to create and modify ribbons. But this should give you an idea of how to start playing with ribbons now.As I'm sure you've noticed, the VSTO 'v3' CTP requires the Beta 1 Te...(truncated)...
New Visual Basic 2005 Edition of VSTO book
(Indexed 2006-04-26):
I'm really excited to announce that the Visual Basic edition of the VSTO book is now available. For more information see http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321411757Several new-book-related observations. First, I'm really pleased with the enhancements we made to this edition of the book. The layout has been refined making for a book that is easier to read and navigate. For example, next to the page number on the right facing pages the book has the section heading to make it easier to navig...(truncated)...
Bill Gates announces availability of the VSTO "v3" Community Technology Preview (CTP)
(Indexed 2006-03-21):
Today at the Office Developer Conference in Redmond, Bill Gates announced the immediate availability of a Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio Tools for Office 'v3'. This CTP release works against the Beta 1 Technical Refresh of Microsoft Office 2007. If you don't have access to the Beta 1 Technical Refresh of Microsoft Office 2007, don't despair--there will be another release of the CTP coming later this spring that will work against Office 2007 Beta 2 which will be more widely avail...(truncated)...
Office Developer Conference
(Indexed 2006-03-16):
Are you coming to the Office Developer Conference next week in Redmond? If so, be sure to check out the sessions on VSTO. I'll be speaking Wednesday at 4:45 in Kodiak and I will show the next version of VSTO working against Office 2007--my focus will be on showing the document customization features of VSTO and support for the new file formats. Andrew Whitechapel will talk about the new application level add-in support in the next version of VSTO. KD--the general manager of the VSTO and VSTA...(truncated)...
Jobs on the VSTO and VSTA Teams at Microsoft
(Indexed 2006-03-03):
Would you like to help realize the vision of Office as a development platform? Do you want your work integrated into every one of the hundreds of millions of desktops that have Office installed? Are you looking for a role where you can influence the product strategy and make a significant impact on an emerging product? If you answered YES! to any of these questions then the VSTO and VSTA team at Microsoft (Redmond, Washington) is the place for you. The VSTO and VSTA team has openings and is loo...(truncated)...
Word hands on labs for VSTO 2005
(Indexed 2006-02-24):
The team has just updated the Word hands on labs for VSTO 2005:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/libr...(truncated)... hands on labs are a great way to learn about VSTO.[Image]
New article on using VSTO 2005 to develop a business intelligence application
(Indexed 2006-02-09):
Another new VSTO 2005 article is now live. This article was written by Steve Hansen of Dakota Technologies Group. The solution demonstrates how you can use VSTO 2005 to develop a business intelligence application with an enhanced user experience. The solution uses Excel PivotTable dynamic views as the front-end application for an Analysis Services 2000 database. Article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/...(truncated)... Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/det...(truncated)...
New MSDN Article on Server Capabilities of VSTO
(Indexed 2006-01-18):
There is a new article on MSDN that focuses on VSTO's support for manipulating documents on the server with VSTO's ServerDocument class. This article was written by Jason De Lorme. Check it out. Article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/e...(truncated)... Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=244...(truncated)... [Image]
The first must-have VSTO add-on: enhance your Office IntelliSense
(Indexed 2005-11-14):
If you haven't downloaded it yet, you must download the Microsoft IntelliSense XML Files for Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System Solution Developers. This download is a must have for any Visual Studio Tools for Office 2003 or 2005 installation. This download provides summary descriptions of types, members, and parameters to IntelliSense ToolTips in code and in the Object Browser for the native PIAs for Word, Excel, Outlook, and MSO (Office Shared Features). The download...(truncated)...
Scrum, Agility, and all that
(Indexed 2005-10-21):
A fellow VSTO team member, Ade Miller, is blogging about Agile methods, scrum, etc.Ade has been scrummaster on our dev team as we have been experimenting recently with some of these ideas in our VSTO 3 development work. Ade is also responsible for some VSTO features like ServerDocument and the LCIDProxy so hopefully he'll give some insight into those features as well (hint hint). Check it out.[Image]
VSTO v3-an early look at our direction
(Indexed 2005-09-28):
At PDC we showed an early alpha build of VSTO v3 that gave attendees an idea of where VSTO v3 is going. Here are some of the early themes of VSTO v3: Works with Office 12 VSTO v3 will target Office 12. We plan to make all the features in VSTO 2005 that worked against Office 11 work against Office 12 in v3. Check out this screenshot from the alpha build showing an early version of Word 12 inside of VS: [Image]Create managed add-ins for more Office applications.Check out this screenshot from th...(truncated)...
Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) Launches at PDC
(Indexed 2005-09-14):
From the team that brought you Visual Studio Tools for Office--we announced a new product today called Visual Studio Tools for Applications.Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is a .NET-based application customization technology designed to be embedded into applications to enable developers to create custom experiences on top of those applications. It offers a full-featured interactive development environment based on Visual Studio techologies, design-time, runtime and supports both VB....(truncated)...
PDC Observations, "Round tripping" the data with simple data binding back to the data base
(Indexed 2005-09-13):
Well, PDC has started. We had a great pre-conference session on VSTO that was well attended--it was fun to show the almost final builds of VSTO 2005 knowing that we're almost to the end of this long journey to get VSTO 2005 released. I can't wait for everyone to be able to start building Office solutions using VSTO when Visual Studio 2005 ships later this year.One "technical" observation in this blog. As part of preparing the VSTO pre-conference, I did a demo on getting the data from a databa...(truncated)...