Our Help content architect, Kathleen McGrath , has created a short, anonymous survey (15 questions/10 mins.) to gather input on how and when the Visual Studio and .NET Framework developer Help content is used, how satisfied you are with it, and about...

This episode has a tip about adding controls to Word documents, a case file about how Canada Post solved its data entry problems, and what to do when an add-in doesn't run and there's no error message. ";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http:...

Deploying or installing the Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs) can sometimes be problematic. There are several common errors that occur when you try to deploy or install the PIAs. Deployment pitfalls A. Can I deploy the PIA DLL with my setup...

This series focuses on the main components or features of Visual Studio 2008 Professional that you can use for Office development. It's organized as short, five-minute episodes that you can listen to while you drive, travel, exercise, eat lunch, or whenever...

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is not finished yet, but we do have a beta version of the documentation ready for you to read! You can learn about some of the features that you'll see later this year when we release SP1. I recommend starting with reading...

When you use ClickOnce in Visual Studio 2008 to deploy your Office solution, you can include prerequisites such as the .NET Framework 3.5, the Visual Studio Tools for Office system 3.0 Runtime, and Windows Installer 3.1. However, the primary interop assemblies...

My last post explained some of the differences between VSTO smart tags (that is, smart tags that you implement in a document-level solution for Word or Excel by using VSTO) and COM smart tags (that is, smart tags that you create by implementing COM interfaces...

The document-level projects for Excel and Word in VSTO (in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008) provide a simple object model that you can use to create smart tags for documents and workbooks. A smart tag is a string that an Office application recognizes...

Have you used the new ClickOnce Publish and Deployment feature in Visual Studio 2008 for Office 2007 solutions ? If so, we need your feedback now - and we need it before May 8th (which is an internal deadline for our team)! We're working on Service Pack...

If you’re looking for guidance on how to integrate SAP or PeopleSoft into your Office applications, then the OBA Sample Application Kits are a great place to start. An OBA, or Office Business Application, is a composite application that integrates line...

If you'd like a quick introduction to the main aspects of Office development using Visual Studio 2008 Professional, you can now get it while you drive, travel, exercise, eat lunch, or whenever you usually listen to your portable MP3 player. (Of course...

I read a question on the forum about databinding in an Excel solution. The developer was asking about Excel 2003, but the answer I wrote will work for both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. Here's the question: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx...

Visual Studio 2008 offers a ClickOnce deployment experience for solutions developed for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. However, if you want to deploy additional files, add extra registry keys, or use SMS, you may still be interested in creating a Windows...

One of the lesser-known features of Visual Studio Tools for Office is the Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel command bar. When you are developing a document-level project for Word or Excel (for example, a Word Document or Excel Workbook...

Theoretically, you can develop an add-in for multiple versions of Microsoft Office by catering to the lowest common denominator. This means if you use an Excel 2003 add-in template in Visual Studio 2008, you would be able to develop and debug this with...

We have received feedback from several folks that they would like design one Ribbon by using the Ribbon visual designer, and then re-use that same Ribbon in more than one Office application. This approach makes sense. If my custom tab looks the same for...

The Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office team just released a cool suite of productivity apps for VS Office development called the VSTO Power Tools . One of the tools included is the Ribbon IDs Tool Window , an add-in tool window for VS that lets you browse...

There are many resources to learn about Visual Studio Tools for Office, and they are scattered through blogdom and even the MSDN Library. In my one year on this team, I've collected various helpful links that I share here. The Visual Studio Tools for...

A lot of VBA developers tell me that they love VBA solutions because there is no deployment necessary. All the code lives inside the document itself, so all you need to do is get the document (in e-mail or on SharePoint) and you have everything you need...

Although VSTO provides many features that help simplify Office development (especially UI development), nearly every VSTO solution needs to dip into the underlying Office object model to get some work done. Because information about using the Office object...

When you deploy your VSTO solution, you must package the following prerequisites for your end users: .NET Framework, the VSTO runtime, and the Microsoft Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs). Visual Studio Tools for Office in Visual Studio 2008...

Last Monday I presented session CLI202: Developing and Deploying Smart Clients for Office at the Office Developer Conference in San Jose. This blog post is a mini-version of the slides and demos from my session. The session was not recorded. Slide...

The Visual Studio Tools for Office build environment in Visual Studio 2008 relies on a number of MSBuild tasks used together with the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Office2003.targets and Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Office2007.targets files...

The Visual Studio team is growing and we have several exciting developer positions open! If you’re looking for big challenges, if you’re driven to innovate, if you are looking for big impact and responsibilities, then you can join us! We are building...

Nathan Carlson developed a creative solution for Outlook 2007 using Visual Studio 2008 (codename Orcas). The Out Loud for Outlook project started as a dogfood testing project last summer. For those of you unfamiliar with the dogfood testing practice at...