January, 2006

To view the list of Office "12" bloggers from my previous blog entry you must have Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later and the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components.

For those of you that have a different browser here's the list:

Topic	Owner	Name	URL	RSS feed
Access 12	Erik Rucker	A discussion of what's new in Access 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/access/	http://blogs.msdn.com/access/rss.aspx
Document Services (ECM)	Rob Lefferts	Office SharePoint Document Services (ECM)	http://blogs.msdn.com/roble/	http://blogs.msdn.com/roble/rss.aspx
Excel 12	Dave Gainer	Microsoft Excel 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/	http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/rss.aspx
FrontPage 12	Rob Mauceri	Rob Mauceri's FrontPage Blog	http://blogs.msdn.com/rmauceri/	http://blogs.msdn.com/rmauceri/rss.aspx
Groove	Mark Olson	Marc's blog about the integration of Groove into Office 12.	http://blogs.msdn.com/marco/	http://blogs.msdn.com/marco/rss.aspx
InfoPath 12	Tudor Toma	InfoPath 12 - Tudor Toma	http://blogs.msdn.com/tudort/	http://blogs.msdn.com/tudort/rss.aspx
Office 12 (General)	Erika Ehrli	Adventures in Office Development and .NET	http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/	http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/rss.aspx
Office 12 (General)	John Durant	Office and a short, bald man	http://blogs.msdn.com/johnrdurant/	http://blogs.msdn.com/johnrdurant/rss.aspx
Office 12 (General)	Steven Sinofsky	Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk	http://blogs.msdn.com/techtalk/	http://blogs.msdn.com/techtalk/rss.aspx
Office 12 Help	Mike Kelly	From my Office to Yours	http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekelly/	http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekelly/rss.aspx
Office 12 New User Interface	Jensen Harris	Jensen Harris  An Office User Interface Blog	http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/	http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/rss.aspx
Office 12 New XML File Format	Brian Jones	Brian Jones  Office XML Formats	http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/	http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/rss.aspx
OneNote 12	Chris Pratley	Chris Pratley's OneNote Blog	http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/	http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/rss.aspx
OneNote 12	Owen Braun	Owen Braun  OneNote 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/owen_braun/	http://blogs.msdn.com/owen_braun/rss.aspx
Outlook 12	Melissa MacBeth	Tasks and Time Management in Outlook	http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/	http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/rss.aspx
Outlook 12	Michael Affronti	michael affronti | microsoft outlook program manager	http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/	http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/rss.aspx
Outlook 12	Will Kennedy	Outlook 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/willkennedy/	http://blogs.msdn.com/willkennedy/rss.aspx
Outlook 12 Extensibility	Ryan Gregg	Ryan's Look at Outlook Programmability	http://blogs.msdn.com/rgregg/	http://blogs.msdn.com/rgregg/rss.aspx
PDF Support in Office 12	Cyndy Wessling	Save as PDF in Office "12"	http://blogs.msdn.com/cyndy_wessling/	http://blogs.msdn.com/cyndy_wessling/rss.aspx
Presentation and Graphics	Brendan Busch	Brendan Busch's blog on PowerPoint 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/brendanb/	http://blogs.msdn.com/brendanb/rss.aspx
Project 12	Dieter Zirkler	Dieter's ProjBlog	http://blogs.msdn.com/dieterz/	http://blogs.msdn.com/dieterz/rss.aspx
Publisher 12	Jeff Bell	On Microsoft Publisher and more	http://blogs.msdn.com/jeff_bell/	http://blogs.msdn.com/jeff_bell/rss.aspx
SharePoint Products and Technologies	Mike Fitz	SharePoint Products and Technologies	http://blogs.msdn.com/mikefitz/	http://blogs.msdn.com/mikefitz/rss.apsx
SharePoint Products and Technologies	SharePoint Team	A blog from the SharePoint Development Team	http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/	http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/rss.apsx
SharePoint Products and Technologies	WCM Team	Web Content Management in Office "12"	http://blogs.msdn.com/wcm/	http://blogs.msdn.com/wcm/rss.aspx
Visio 12	Eric Rockey	What's new in Visio 12	http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_rockey/	http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_rockey/rss.aspx
VSTO	VSTO Team	Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System	http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/	http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/rss.aspx
Windows Sharepoint Services	PJ Hough	Windows Sharepoint Services etc	http://blogs.msdn.com/pjhough/	http://blogs.msdn.com/pjhough/rss.aspx
Word 12	Joe Friend	Joe Friend  Microsoft Office Word	http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/	http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/rss.aspx
XPS and Windows Digital Documents	Andy Simonds	My blog (Andy, GPM in Windows) about XPS and the Windows Digital Documents Team.	http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/	http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/rss.aspx

As a developer, I was quite excited to learn that Office "12" will allow you to save documents as PDF/XPS. Since that moment, I have been quite surprised to see excitement around that feature. I am now happy to learn more about XPS. You should read Jeff Bell's blog and Andy Simonds's blog to learn more about this.

For those of you who have been asking through my blog and email if this functionality (Save As PDF) is going to be exposed in the API the answer is YES! Office PIAs will have methods that expose this functionality. The details and sample code will be available after we ship Beta 2.

I have been receiving some emails from developers who can't wait to start playing around with Office "12" and that want to know how to enroll to the Beta 2 program. I don't manage the program, but I just talked with someone from the Office "12" Partner Readiness Team and here's what you have to do:

For Beta 1:

Office 12 Beta 1 is a limited, non-public beta for partners who have achieved the Information Worker Solutions Competency status. You can learn more about the Information Worker Solutions Competency by visiting https://partner.microsoft.com/global/competency/iwsolutions/40010101

For Beta 2:

To register for Office “12” Beta 2, available later this spring, please go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx and click the “register now” link at the top of the page.

I encourage you to register and start experimenting with Office "12". I have been playing around with Office "12" for some time and every day I get surprised while I discover new features.

Today I was working with Excel "12" and I made some demo graphics that present some MSDN traffic results.  I really like the professional and cool look that you can get when you are building charts and they are quite easy to customize.

So if you want to start playing around with Office "12" too, follow the previous instructions and I am sure you will have a blast!

I have been playing around with Office "12" and SharePoint "v3" and I am quite surprised of how easy it is to view and interact with Excel Spreadsheets in a browser thanks to Excel Services. I needed to build a site and share with my team our content plans for Office "12." I had an Excel file that I wanted to share so I added an Excel Web Access web part that allows my peers to interact with an Excel 12 Workbook as a Web page. This is way much better than sending around my file by email!

If you have the time, you can build a Web site to display an Excel Spreadsheet. The following are six different approaches you could use to display an Excel Spreadsheet (or at least its contents) on a Web page:

1. Web page 1: Save your Excel Spreadsheet as an html file and add an html IFrame to a Web page to embed your Spreadsheet. This option requires Office Web Components.
2. Web page 2: Use ADO and the Microsoft Excel Driver.
3. Web page 3: You could also databind your Excel Spreadsheet to an ASP.NET datagrid to display the content of your Spreadsheet as a table.
4. Web page 4: Copy and paste your Excel Spreadsheet to Visual Studio and it will be rendered as an HTML table. To simple and you will lose functionality such as sorting and filtering).
5. Web page 5: Buy a third-party component that will build web pages for you, such as SpreadsheetGear.
6. Web page 6: Use an ActiveX control such as DSO Framer Control Object to host Excel inside your Web page.

If you were using a SharePoint site, you would also need to build a web part that displays any Web page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 and this would take you longer. Using Excel Services, it took me less than a minute to add and configure a web part that displays an Excel Spreadsheet.

If you want to learn more about Excel Services, don't miss the opportunity to read David Gainer's blog. By the way, one of the Excel Spreadsheets that I wanted to share with my team is a growing list of Office "12" bloggers. I wish I could show you all a running Excel Services web part. I can't run Excel Services in my blog so I went for the Web page 1 approach to share with you my Office "12" bloggers list.

 

Enjoy!

Look what I just found: 101 Visual Basic and C# Code Samples. The www has lots of great things out there and sometimes we can't know about all of them. I have ended finding many good code samples by accident and I am always happy to find them; it's almost as good as when you find money in the pocket of a jacket you haven't used in a while.

An interesting thing of developing Office applications using managed code is that you always need knowledge of how to work with multiple .NET assemblies to accomplish different tasks. Even if you are a great developer and already know a bunch of classes, it always comes handy to learn best practices. Here is a list of some code samples you can find in there:

1. Advanced .NET Framework (Localization) - Work with Resource Files
2. File - How-To File System
3. Framework - Creating an Enterprise Services Component
4. Framework - How-To Configuration Settings
5. Framework - How-To Work with XML
6. Framework - Understanding the Garbage Collector
7. NET Framework - How-To Send Mail
8. Web Services - Consume a Web Service
9. Windows Forms - How-To Automate Office
10. Windows Forms - Use Regular Expressions

...and more, in fact 101 great code samples that are good to keep in your jacket's pocket.

I have given my blog a long winter vacation and here I am back and quite excited to start writing more news related with Office "12." This is going to be a great year for Microsoft with Windows Vista and Office "12" being shipped; everybody here at Microsoft is starting this year full on energy, enthusiasm, and hard work for all of you.

I am currently working on the content plan for MSDN and Office "12" and the current wish list that I am building contains a proposed set of technical articles, columns, quickstarts, recommended books, white papers, code samples, screen casts, and product team video interviews (we are working close to Channel 9 to produce great videos that are valuable for Office developers). We are defining specific content items for each of the following products and features:

• Access "12"
• Excel "12"
• InfoPath "12"
• OneNote "12"
• Outlook "12"
• PowerPoint "12"
• Project "12"
• Visio "12"
• Project Server "12"
• SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services "v3"
• Ribbon UI Extensibility
• Custom Task Panes
• Managed COM add-ins
• Office "12" Open XML Formats
• XML in Office

and more...

If you have been reading Office "12" blogs (Brian Jones, Jensen Harris, David Gainer, Jeff Bell, and Brendan Busch have extraordinary Office "12"  blogs), you are enrolled to Office "12" Beta program (if you want to register go here), or you are just interested in what's new for developers in Office "12" and SharePoint, and if you have recommendations of articles, code samples, interviews or anything that you think is a must have for Office developers, please let me know. Write your own wish list and feel free to let us know what you and/or your customer would love to see and keep visiting this site to learn more about what's coming for Office "12."

I wish you all a great 2006 year full of happiness, health, work, and good things.

Have fun!

If you want to learn more about Windows Vista and Microsoft Office "12", you can enroll to the ISV Touchdown Briefings for Windows Vista and Microsoft Office "12."

The Office "12" preview includes the following:

• The new UI extensibility model which includes: Application-centric task panes, add-in development, and Ribbon UI extensibility features.
• The Microsoft Office System open XML File Format, which allows for manipulation of files, creating files without using the individual programs, repurposing content, and merging files with business data.
• New Investments in Server-Side Components with Office "12": Excel Services, InfoPath Forms Server, and the enhanced capabilities of Share Point Portal Server v3 Office "12" will provide applications with server-based infrastructure for data calculation, common workspaces, and document lifecycle management.