This probably seems pretty obvious but there was no way until the June CTP build to fill a ListObject with data and then disconnect it from the underlying data source---effectively doing a read only databinding to ListObject. There is now a Disconnect...

We made a couple of small changes to our dynamic controls support feature--this is the feature where at runtime you can add new managed controls or host item controls to the document--like a button or a NamedRange. Two changes: 1) There is now a...

Another thing that came back loud and clear in developer feedback is that there needs to be a way to cleanly remove the VSTO 2005 customization from a Word or Excel document. We have provided such a method called RemoveCustomization() that you will find...

I recently blogged about the new feature that fixes the Excel Locale issue. There are several other last minute additions to VSTO that I will blog about in the next several posts that you can try out in the June CTP drop. As part of our last VSTO dev...

The June CTP of Visual Studio 2005 is now live on MSDN. In this build, you will find that VSTO has added a feature to address the Excel LCID or Locale issue. What is the Excel Locale issue? Well, if you run a VSTO customization for Excel on a machine...

VSTO smart tags let you easily create a smart tag by adding some terms to it. For example, consider this simple smart tag in a VSTO worksheet project item. It creates a smart tag that recognizes the term "Halibut". One caveat about using the terms collection...

I'm looking for a strong developer with C++ & C# skills to work on the next version of VSTO. I am the hiring manager for this position. Submit your resume via my contact link: http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_carter/contact.aspx Visual Studio Tools for...

Misha also worked on the VSTO Smart Tags feature. I recently asked him this question: Eric: One aspect of the smart tag design seems pretty strange to me: Why do you have to do this: SmartTag mySmartTag = new SmartTag(" http://smarttags.me.com#fish...

Kathleen has created yet another awesome video, this time showing VSTO's new support for Outlook. Her demonstration shows you how to use the new Microsoft Office Outlook add-in project feature in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft...

More exciting announcements! Eric Lippert and I have just completed writing a book on VSTO that will be in the Addison-Wesley .NET Series--it is coming out this fall. You can read a sample chapter that covers VSTO's new support for Outlook here: ...

Steve Ballmer announced VSTO support for Outlook add-ins in his Tech-Ed keynote today. This is exciting news--VSTO Outlook add-ins solve all the problems people have encountered while trying to build managed COM add-ins for Outlook using IDTExtensibility2...

Continuing my series of interviews with Misha Shneerson. Eric: Why did we use the "wrap" approach for ActionsPane instead of the "extends" approach? VSTO uses two models to provide additional functionality on top of the Office object models. In...

Misha Shneerson--also known as "Misha-Cat" and "founder of ActionsPane" recently answered some questions I had about ActionsPane. To preface this, VSTO's support for ActionsPane actually attaches a Smart Document solution to the Word or Excel document...