There are many things to like about VSTO 2005 Second Edition. But there are 5 things to love about it.

1. You can create managed add-ins that work for both Office 2003 and Office 2007. I can create a single add-in for both Office platforms or I can create targeted add-ins that takes advantage of the features of each version of Office.
2. You can create add-ins for the Office applications that you use most: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio. This just about covers all of the scenarios around Office applications in the enterprise. If you think we are missing one let us know.
3. You can create custom Ribbons, application level task panes, and Outlook form regions. You can take advantage of the cool new features of Office 2007.
4. You can install it in Visual Studio Professional or above. I no longer need to buy a separate VS sku to do Office development.
5. All of your existing VSTO 2005 applications continue to just work in Office 2007. I don’t have time to rewrite everything; my apps should just continue to work.
6. It’s FREE. Finally a price I can afford. No more excuses not to jump into the world of Office development.

Ok, so that is 6 things to love about VSTO 2005 Second Edition. Even though this a targeted release between the major ship cycles of VSTO 2005 and the next version, code named VS Orcas, there is so many features crammed into this release. There are many more nuggets of information that I haven’t been able to blog about yet but hope to get to.

Tell me what you love about VSTO Second Edition.