Andrew Whitechapel

Shiny things that caught my eye

Time to Jump Ship

I've been working in the Office Development space for over 10 years now, and I finally decided it's...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/30/2009

HLSL in Office

HLSL is the High Level Shading Language for DirectX, documented here. I was wondering the other day...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/22/2009

Excel Services Getting Started – Pt4 Web Service APIs

This continues my previous checklists here, here and here on getting started with Excel Services. In...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/20/2009

Excel Services Getting Started – Pt3 EWA

This continues my previous checklists here and here on getting started with Excel Services. In this...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/04/2009

Excel Services Getting Started – Pt2 UDFs

This continues my previous checklist on getting started with Excel Services. Here, I’ll append a...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/24/2009

Excel Services Setup and Getting Started

As part of an internal prototype I was working on recently, I had to set up a machine for Excel...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/21/2009

MEF in Office?

In my last post, I looked briefly at MEF, and I’m wondering how this model can be applied to Office...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/07/2009

MEF

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library, still under development, that provides...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/31/2009

Carter-Lippert VSTO Book Updated

The eagerly-awaited update to Eric Carter and Eric Lippert’s VSTO book has been released this week....

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2009

Silverlight Web Part in SharePoint

Having looked at Silverlight in Office client, I thought I’d round out the exercise by looking at...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2009

Silverlight Deep Zoom and Office Add-ins

I had some ‘free’ time today waiting to give a demo at an MVP conference session – the session...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/07/2009

Exposing Events From Non-VSTO Add-in Automation Objects

I posted a while back about exposing an automation object from an add-in that fires events. That...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/01/2009

COM Shim 2.3.1.0 Bug Fixes

A customer (VSP) was using the COM Shim and identified a scenario where a bug in the shim code could...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/26/2009

Message Hooks in Add-ins

Just like my earlier post on message filters, this is an advanced scenario – so be warned: you...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/24/2009

Launching Office Apps Programmatically

There are at least 9 different ways to start or connect to an Office app programmatically in managed...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/30/2008

Passing Objects to Exposed Add-in Methods

I’ve posted a few times on the best way to expose methods from an add-in to automation clients – for...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/30/2008

Using Managed Controls as ActiveX Controls

Can you use a managed usercontrol in an Office document in the same way that you can use a native...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/25/2008

Implementing IMessageFilter in an Office add-in

First a warning: this is an advanced scenario, and you should not attempt to use this technique...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/19/2008

Advances in .NET Type System

Here at PDC, Misha Shneerson has just delivered a talk on a couple of very interesting new features...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/28/2008

Exposing Events from Managed Add-in Objects

Following on from my recent posts on exposing add-in objects, here and here, it occurred to me that...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/13/2008

Exciting PDC Session

Under the Hood: Advances in the .NET Type SystemThis is one session you absolutely must not miss. It...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/06/2008

AddInSpy - Diagnosing/Troubleshooting Office Add-ins

AddInSpy is a new diagnostic tool for reporting the maximum possible information about all Office...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/01/2008

Version-Specific UI in Add-ins

Continuing on from my earlier posts on building add-ins for multiple versions of Office, avoiding...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 09/02/2008

COM Shim Wizard 2.3.1.0

We’ve released a slight update to the COM Shim Wizard. This is available as a free download here,...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/27/2008

Activating a Custom Tab on the Ribbon When a Document Is Opened

Harry 'Play It Again Sam' Miller has posted a wonderfully funny video on this topic - with a serious...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/19/2008

COMAddIns Race Condition

You can expose an arbitrary object from your add-in as a kind of extension to the Office host...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/13/2008

Why your COMAddIn.Object should derive from StandardOleMarshalObject

In general, it is important that any code in a managed Office add-in should execute on the main UI...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/11/2008

Creating a PivotTable Programmatically

I received an email from a customer the other day asking how to set up an Excel pivot table...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/25/2008

Demand-Loading VSTO Add-ins

In an earlier post, I talked about how you could delay (or prevent) the loading of managed code...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/14/2008

Add-ins for Multiple Office Versions without PIAs (Pt2), or _VtblGap

In my last post, I discussed how you could avoid any dependency on the Office PIAs by using...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 06/24/2008

Add-ins for Multiple Office Versions without PIAs

In a previous post, I discussed how you could build an add-in for multiple versions of Office, and...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 06/03/2008

PDC 2008 Open for Registration

It’s been 3 years since the last Professional Developers Conference, so I’m pleased that we’re doing...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/28/2008

Ribbon and Task Pane in Access Add-ins

In an earlier post, I looked at how you could morph a VSTO project for one application into a...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/22/2008

The Case For Shared Add-ins

People have been building native shared add-ins for Office (and related apps) since their...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/09/2008

Delay-loading the CLR in Office Add-ins

Suppose you control your enterprise desktops to the extent that you control which add-ins are...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/19/2008

VSTO Loader and Runtime Components

Perusing the forums over the last few months, it’s clear that there’s some confusion about the...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/02/2008

Integrating Doc-level and Add-in Solutions

Everyone knows you can build document-level Office solutions and you can build application-level...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/20/2008

ActiveX Controls in VSTO Solutions

In the past, before it became strategically acceptable to build Office-based solutions in managed...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2008

VSTO Power Tools

I announced the release of v1 of the VSTO/VSTA Power Tools last time, and they've been getting quite...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/05/2008

VSTO/VSTA Power Tools v1.0

As I announced at the Office Developers Conference in San Jose this week, we’re releasing a set of...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/21/2008

VSTO Add-ins for Access?

In my previous post, I looked at how the VSTO add-in model is flexible enough to be used in...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/19/2008

Add-ins for Office 14

Following on from my previous post, it should be clear that we've designed the VSTO Office add-in...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/01/2008

Jobs in Visual Studio Biz Apps

The Visual Studio team is growing and we have several exciting developer positions open! If you’re...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/31/2008

Back To The Future

Or, Prototyping VSTO Add-ins for Unsupported Office Versions/Applications It is in the nature of the...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/29/2008

Managed Automation Add-ins

I've been thinking more about calling unmanaged XLL UDFs from managed code than about managed...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/23/2008

Feed your geek

We're 26 days away from the 2008 Office Developer Conference. I've been roped in to talk about the...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/15/2008

Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt2)

In my previous post, I looked at how to build a VSTO add-in that invokes native XLL UDFs via the...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/01/2008

Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt1)

As part of a little ongoing investigation, I wanted to communicate between a managed add-in and a...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/13/2007

Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008

As part of a little investigation I'm doing at present, I needed to build some simple native XLLs...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/09/2007

PDC 2008

Hard on the heels of the Office DevCon, we've just announced the dates for the Microsoft...

Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/07/2007

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