Paul Stubbs

One annoying feature of XP is the Language Bar. This is the little toolbar that opens at the bottom of your screen and has no apparent purpose ( Microsoft Windows XP - What is the Language bar? ). Since it takes up valuable space on the Taskbar I want...

The RTM version of the SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 VHD files are now available for download. This includes Windows Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and more. See the download site...

UPDATE: Please go here to download the RTM version of the VHD http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pstubbs/archive/2010/05/11/download-sharepoint-2010-vhd-demo-environment.aspx The SharePoint team just released a fully installed BETA SharePoint 2010 VHD file...

Here is an excellent article on Converting Code from VBA to Visual Basic .Net . The article talks about many of the pitfalls in converting. In general converting from VBA to VB .Net is very straight forward. This article is a must read for developers...

One question that I frequently get is how to call managed code from VBA. In general it is not recommended to mix VBA with managed code mainly due to the non-deterministic eventing model. In other words if VBA and managed code are listening for the same...

One of my favorite features in the latest version of VSTO is ClickOnce Deployment. ClickOnce deployment makes securely deploying my Office add-in and document level solutions easy. VSTO deployment supports, Local , HTTP , UNC , CD / DVD and USB locations...

The Windows Phone 7 platform contains great out of the box integration with SharePoint under the Office Hub. But what if you want to create your own custom applications on the phone that leverage SharePoint 2010 data and services? In this blog post I...

VSTO 2005 enables developers to create Windows form Action Panes in Word and Excel with only 1 line of code. I will show you how to extend this technique to create an Action Pane using HTML. Why would you want to use HTML for a client side application...

Now you have created your XNA game but how do you package it so the world can download and install it? You will see how to build a windows setup (.msi) for your XNA game. You will use Visual Studio 2005 Pro (or above) to create a setup project that will...

[Updated: 1/30/2011 All Links] Office and SharePoint hands on labs The best way to get started learning about Office and SharePoint is to use the Channel 9 training kits. The training kits contain and number of videos and hands on labs. In order to complete...

Today we released an update to the SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Course on Channel 9 . This training course contains 14 training units covering all aspects of developing solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform using Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint...

Smart Tags are VSTO’s newest feature. They have been added to the product since Beta 1 has shipped. VSTO 2005 does for Smart Tags what it did for Action Pane , makes it easy and understandable for a .net programmer. Smart Tags in Office have been around...

Today Chris Johnson and I are releasing a new tool to help you setup a SharePoint 2010 developer machine. In order to make this process as easy as possible we have created a series of PowerShell scripts that automate the entire process of building a fully...

Creating SmartTags for Word and Excel using VSTO 2005 has become incredibly simple. I will show you how to create a SmartTag that interacts with an ActionsPane in less than 10 lines of code, including adding the ActionsPane. One of the hardest things...

In my blog yesterday I showed How to create a Word Watermark using VSTO 2005 . This was relatively easy to do using VB .Net. Today I will show you the same code using VSTO 2005 and C# (for those of you who like abuse). I have tried to make the code exactly...

I finished my first XNA application tonight at 1 minute before midnight on the launch day. This is an application that I wrote before using MDX 2.0 and Winforms (See the old article for the features) . I was able to convert the entire app in about...

Today the SharePoint team announced that Service Pack 2 is ready to go. SP2 rolls up all previous bug fixes and patches. SP2 also includes new features to improve performance, availability and stability. SP2 also prepares your SharePoint farm to make...

Learn how to use VSTS to create automated tests for VSTO Office applications....

Now that the XBOX 360 controller works on windows I thought it would be fun to hook it up to a windows forms application using Visual C# Express and Managed DirectX (MDX). So here is the scenario; you’re at your desk entering the latest budget numbers...

Today during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech he announced VSTO for Outlook. Now in addition to Word and Excel, you can create Outlook add-ins using VSTO 2005 for Office 2003. VSTO will create managed add-ins for Outlook that will appear to Outlook as a...

Introduction One question that I hear from developers creating advanced VSTO solution is how to create unit tests using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers (VSTS). VSTS doesn’t contain a test template for VSTO projects. The Add New...

Programmatically creating watermarks in Word can be a challenge. Here I have created the code to add and remove watermarks in Word using VSTO 2005. The way I created this code is the way the many VBA programmers work. They record a macro doing the action...

Steve Fox walks you through the process of building a WPF application using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to access SharePoint 2007 List data. Using the newest version of Visual Studio, C#, Linq, XML, and SharePoint web services to pull a List from the server...

Today we announced the Beta release of Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Second Edition (VSTO SE) . This version of VSTO is a free download that you add to Visual Studio 2005 Pro or VSTO 2005. VSTO SE enabled Office 2007 add-in development and it also...

Both Outlook and Groove contain calendars so which one do you use? Each one has its own strengths but it would be cool to be able to sync your appointments. I have created a small sample using VSTO and the Groove SDK that will allow you to import and...