This week, I’m featuring the topic Walkthrough: Copying a document to the end user computer after a ClickOnce Installation of an Office solution . As a continuation of an earlier interview, programming writer Mary Lee demonstrates how to deploy an Office solution and implement a post-deployment action...

This week, I’m featuring the topic: Walkthrough: Deploying Multiple Office Solutions in a Single ClickOnce Installer . This topic describes how you can deploy multiple Office solutions in a single package to simplify the installation and update process. For example, you can now publish both an...

The new content controls in Word 2007 are great for a number of reasons: Drag and Drop . With VSTO, you can add the different types of content controls to the document in the same way you'd add controls to a Windows Form: by dragging them from the Toolbox. Document Protection . Protecting...

Recently, I posted an entry about my favorite VSTO feature : the Ribbon Designer. In Beta 2 of VSTO, there are a lot more controls available, so I've created a new video that shows you how to use some of these controls. View Video Download Video (Right-click link) --Kathleen

Paul Stubbs just posted an interesting blog entry about how to tie Groove and Outlook together using VSTO. Paul shows you how to call into Microsoft Office Groove 2007 (a collaboration software program) from an Outlook 2007 add-in. To learn more, see Groove'n with VSTO . -- Kathleen

One of my favorite features in the latest version of VSTO is the Ribbon Designer . The Ribbon Designer makes it easy to customize the Ribbon in your Office applications. In VSTO 2005 SE, you could add a Ribbon Item to your project and then add XML markup, along with code in callbacks to customize the...

Learn how to to create a custom task pane that automates Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. In this Visual How to , Harry shows you how to create a custom task pane that inserts dates into a slide when the user clicks a MonthCalendar control that is on the custom task pane. -- Kathleen

Learn how to add buttons to the Microsoft Office Fluent Ribbon in Word 2007 that enable you to interact with the document. This Visual How to provides a link to the documentation in the MSDN libary as well as a corresponding video. Enjoy! --Kathleen

Check out the new Visual How to video and learn how to add a task pane to applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system using VSTO 2005 SE. The Visual How to also has links to corresponding documentation in the MSDN Library. Want to see more Visual How to videos? Send us your feedback by adding a...

We've made code snippets from the VSTO for Mere Mortals book available in a ZIP file . If you want to try the examples without having to type out the code, be sure to download a copy! VSTO For Mere Mortals Code.zip --Kathleen

This screencast shows you how to customize the Ribbon in Word 2007, by adding a new group of controls to the Home tab. View Video Download Video (Right-click link) The video is 03:10 minutes in length, and 8 MB in size. --Kathleen

This screencast shows you how to customize the Ribbon in Excel using VSTO 2005 SE. You'll see how to use the new Ribbon support item in Visual Studio to add a group and toggleButton to the Add-ins tab of the Ribbon, and how to further customize it. View Video Download Video (Right-click link...

This screencast shows you how to convert an Actions Pane solution in Excel 2003 to a Custom Task Pane solution in Excel 2007. This enables the task pane to be available to any workbook that you open. View Video Download Video (Right-click link) The video is 04:37 minutes in length, and 7MB in...

In this screencast, I describe the differences between VSTO 2005 and VSTO 2005 SE. View Video Download Video (Right-click link) The video is 05:43 minutes in length, and 8 MB in size. --Kathleen

The VSTO for Mere Mortals book is now available! Co-author Paul Stubbs and I will be creating a number of video screencasts that demonstrate Office development concepts as described in the book. The videos will not be posted in any particular order, but there will be some overviews, walkthroughs,...

If you haven't already seen it, take a look at this brief video demo that shows off some of the VSTO 2005 SE features: VSTO 2005 SE Demo The presentation is done by Andrew Whitechapel of the VSTO team, but if you look really close, you might see me there as well (around minute 6:40). :-) --Kathleen

The latest version of VSTO (VSTO 2005 SE) is available for download. You can use VSTO 2005 SE to create add-ins for both Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System. VSTO 2005 SE helps you easily customize the new UI features of the 2007 Microsoft Office System, including the ribbon, the custom...

I responded to a question in the VSTO Forum about how to add a TextBox control to a Word document by clicking a button on the ActionsPane. I thought I'd share the code here as well. This code adds the textbox to the current selection to give the user the opportunity to choose where in the document...

Paul Stubbs recently participated in a podcast with Andrew Coates to discuss Office development. You can listen to the podcast here: Microsoft Developer Show #07 - Building Applications that Integrate with Office --Kathleen

Paul Stubbs has posted two interesting articles about Unit Testing for VSTO using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers (VSTS). Check them out: Unit Testing for VSTO (part 1 Manual Tests) Unit Testing for VSTO (part 2 Automated Tests) --Kathleen

In my previous post , I described how you can re-use an image from an existing Word command on your Ribbon button. I've created a video screencast that demonstrates it. The file is 7 MB in size and is approximately 4 minutes long: ControlID Screencast . --Kathleen

In Chapter 14 of VSTO for Mere Mortals , we describe how to customize the ribbon. When you customize the ribbon, you might want to re-use an existing button image. In VBA, you had to look up the FaceID for the control, and there wasn't an easy way to do that. There were several macros available that...

The VSTO team just released Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Beta (VSTO 2005 SE Beta) (aka "Cypress"). See the announcement here . VSTO 2005 SE Beta is a free add-on for Visual Studio that allows you to create application-level customizations in six Office 2007 applications (Word...

As Maarten van Stam pointed out, the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Mere Mortals book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Take a look at http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Studio-Tools-Office-Mortals/dp/0321426711/sr=1-2/qid=1157069826/ref=sr_1_2/102-3409571-7474505?ie=UTF8&s=books . --Kathleen

I know, I know...I haven't posted many new video demos since starting this blog. I've had a lot of changes happening lately, and I've been spending a lot of time finishing up work on the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for Mere Mortals book. We added an entire chapter dedicated to the new Cypress...