Kevin Boske - VSTA : VSTO

OpenXML Package Editor RTW with VSTO Powertools!

KevinBoske — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:21:00 GMT

Back when we were working heavily on the OpenXML file format developer tools, many of us were using zip and Notepad to edit the OpenXML files. Tom Underhill from the Office graphics team made all our lives easier with a VS package for editing OpenXML files. I used it quite a bit during the OpenXML code snippet development (you might have even seen a quick glipse of it in a demo somewhere). There are other Package file editors available, (like Wouter's), but I like this one mainly because its integrated in VS. (Where I spend much of my time these days).

Andrew Whitechapel and the VSTO folks got a shipping vehicle for Tom's OpenXML Package Editor. Along with a number of other VSTO and VSTA Powertools, the VS-integrated Package editor is available here.

Here's a list of features you'll find in the VSTO Powertool Package Editor:

Ability to open any package file via Visual Studio 2008
Navigate package and Relationship structure
Get properties on Parts and Relationships
Read and write XML within parts
Add and delete Parts and Relationships

Andrew has all the details on his blog.

VBA and Office 14

KevinBoske — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:04:00 GMT

There's been some discussion on this thread on Slashdot, (updated) which started from this article in The Register UK.

To be clear, Microsoft is not replacing VBA with VSTA or VSTO in Office for Windows. (though VSTA and VSTO are still important developer tools for Office 14)

~~VBA is here to stay, as was announced some time back by Steven Sinofsky.~~

(Correction: Steven emailed me and corrected me that his previous statement. I didn't want to misquote. The words "to stay" might imply "forever", and that wasn't the intent. I have no idea how long VBA will be supported in Office, beyond Office 14.)

The Excel and Access Blogs both have posts covering this from the Office perspective.

(almost) Everything Shipped!

KevinBoske — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:24:26 GMT

Okay, I've been out for a couple of days, taking some time after shipping Office 2007 and getting ready for another product delivery (our second child, a girl, due anytime).

While I was busy getting baby stuff out of storage, the rest of the company kept busy shipping great products for 2007. Here's the rollup with links of everything that came out over the past couple of days:

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition

VSTO 2005 SE is a fully-supported free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 that enables developers to build applications on the 2007 Office System. This is really great, the folks in VSTO stepped up and got this Second Edition out just in time for Office 2007. Here are some highlights of the functionality:

Application-level add-in support for the most popular 2007 Office System applications including Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio, and provides safe loading/unloading and easy management of managed add-ins.
Design-time and runtime support for key 2007 Office System features such as the Ribbon, Custom Task Panes, and Outlook forms regions.
NOTE: There are no visual designers for these features in this release.
Design-time support for InfoPath 2007 form templates
Maintainability and compatibility assurances. VSTO 2005 SE ensures that the applications customers have built on Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 continue to run with 2007 Office system.
The ability to run in Visual Studio 2005 Professional.
Expanded application-level add-in support for these Office 2003 Standard and Professional applications: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Visio.
VSTO 2005 SE Setup allows you to install VSTO 2005 SE on Microsoft Vista.

Go get it and start building some great CTP solutions!

.NET Framework 3.0

In this released build of .NET 3.0, you will find the System.IO.Packaging namespace in the windowsbase.dll assembly. This is Microsoft's offering to enable developers to write applications against the Office Open XML file formats.

Windows Vista

Yes, you heard it right, Vista has shipped, it's finally here.

VSTO V3 CTP Released!

KevinBoske — Tue, 23 May 2006 21:13:00 GMT

Mike Hernandez just emailed us to report that the June CTP of VSTO V3 is released:

Microsoft Pre-Release Software Visual Studio Tools For Office "V3" - June Community Technology Preview (CTP)

The June 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office "V3" is now available.

The primary goal of this CTP is to showcases several new important investments in the area of Office programmability. New XML-based file formats, a revolutionized and highly extensible Office user interface, and support for managed add-ins in Office applications not previously covered by Visual Studio Tools for Office provide an unprecedented number of new opportunities and challenges for Office solution developers. Visual Studio Tools for Office provides an easy to use, reliable, and secure solution development environment and infrastructure to help developers exploit these opportunities and challenges and take their solutions to the next level.

Note: This CTP requires you to have the beta 2 release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Please click here for more information and download instructions.