Office Development with Visual Studio : Beth Massi

Migrating an Outlook Solution to .NET Framework 4 in Visual Studio 2010 (Norm Estabrook)

VSTO Team — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:33:37 GMT

Visual Studio can help migrate your Outlook solutions from .NET Framework 3.5 to the .NET Framework 4. However, you still have to do a few things manually to make it all work.

Beth Massi converts an Outlook Solution that targets the .NET Framework 3.5 to an Outlook Solution that targets the .NET Framework 4 client profile in this very cool and informative blog entry - Migrating an Outlook Client to .NET Framework 4 in Visual Studio 2010.

Office Development with Visual Studio 2008 Tutorial Series – Part 2(Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:36:03 GMT

Last month Robert Green, VSTO MVP, started a series of tutorials on building on Office 2007. Today we published part 2 of his step-by-step tutorials.

In this second part of the series of tutorials on Office Business Applications, learn how to create a Word 2007 price quote generation solution using Visual Studio 2008. This tutorial shows you how to create a custom task pane to display data from a database and binding that data to content controls. This step-by-step tutorial also includes full source code in Visual Basic and C#. Check out the tutorial on the VSTO Developer Center:

Building an Office Business Application Part 2 – Generating Automobile Quotes

And if you missed part 1:

Building an Office Business Application Part 1 - Scheduling Customer Appointments

If you’re just getting started with Office development in Visual Studio, this is a great place to start.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

New Learning Resources on the VSTO Developer Center (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:37:09 GMT

Last week we revamped the Learn pages on the VSTO Developer Center with more content that allows you to pivot on more fine-grained topics and tasks under each type of Office solution. We’ve changed the layout of these pages so that you can browse for a type of solution (right now we have Excel, Word, Outlook and Deployment) and then you can drill down into the specific topics to reveal articles and videos underneath. As you select a topic on the left, the content changes on the right so check it out.

We’ve gone through and picked key content in the Visual Studio and Office MSDN libraries, other Developer Centers and blogs like this one to bring you a better integrated learning experience -- especially if you’re just getting started programming Office solutions with Visual Studio. Let me know what topics I’ve missed by making a comment to the end of this post or by contacting me directly and I’ll get them added. Also let me know how you like this layout, we’re planning on taking this approach to the Visual Basic and C# Developer Centers as well.

This is a work in progress so you’ll see more content being added to the site as I find it. I suggest making the VSTO Developer Center your home page so you don’t miss a beat ;-).

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Office 2010 Beta & SharePoint 2010 Beta Now Available to the Public (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:54:34 GMT

Monday Office and SharePoint 2010 Beta were released to MSDN/TechNet subscribers. Today it was announced at PDC that these are available to the rest of the public! Come and get it…

Office 2010 Beta

SharePoint 2010 Beta

These Betas are compatible with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 which was released to the public a few weeks ago. We’ve also started a series on Channel 9 on SharePoint development in Visual Studio so check that out starting with:

Overview of SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010

Also check out…

Office 2010 resources

SharePoint 2010 Resources

And stay tuned here for more posts on Office Development with Visual Studio 2010!

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Office 2010 Application Compatibility Program (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:46:10 GMT

If you missed it, Office announced a compatibility program to help IT and developers who have built add-ins make a seamless upgrade to Office 2010. We want you to have a successful and seamless migration to Office 2010 for your VSTO solutions. The program provides tools for environment assessment, code scanning and remediation assistance, and an update to the document conversion tools introduced with Office 2007.

Check out Michael Kiselman’s post for more details on the program that will be available in early December.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Office Development with Visual Studio 2008 Tutorial Series Started (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:25:36 GMT

Robert Green, VSTO MVP, has started a series of tutorials on building on Office 2007! Thanks Robert!

In this first of a series of tutorials on building applications on Office you’ll learn how to create an Outlook 2007 customer appointment management solution using Visual Studio 2008. This step-by-step tutorial also includes full source code in Visual Basic and C#. Check out the tutorial on the VSTO Developer Center:

Building an Office Business Application Part 1 - Scheduling Customer Appointments

If you’re just getting started with Office development in Visual Studio, this is a great place to start.

Enjoy!

Channel 9 Interview: John Durant on Developing Managed Applications for Office 2010 in Visual Studio 2010 (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:41:19 GMT

Robert Hess posted an interview yesterday on Channel 9 with John Durant on Developing Managed Applications for Office 2010 in Visual Studio 2010. When you have 20 minutes you should check it out.

John provides some highlights as to what he’ll be showing in his PDC sessions, and some of the new features that developers can look forward to in Office and Visual Studio 2010.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Using Windows Presentation Foundation and Line-of-Business Data in Microsoft Office Clients (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:24:00 GMT

I mentioned on my blog yesterday that SDN Magazine made an article I wrote back in May available online -- and since it’s all about using WPF & data in a VSTO solution I thought I’d post the link up here too :-)

Using Windows Presentation Foundation and Line-of-Business Data in Microsoft Office Clients

In this article I talk about how to expose Line-of-Business data via ADO.NET Data Services to an Excel client using WPF. Office solutions you build with Visual Studio are designed to work with Windows Forms controls but you can also use WPF controls in your solutions as well. Any UI element that can host Windows Forms controls in an Office solution (VSTO) can also host WPF controls using the Winforms ElementHost as a container.

Using WPF controls in Office allows you to think out of the box and provide world-class data visualizations that are not possible with Windows Forms controls. And you can do it easily in an instantly familiar end-user application like those in the Office family. But what if you don’t have any fancy data visualizations? Even the simplest controls that display data are often better off as WPF controls in Office applications because they better match the UI styles used in the latest versions of Office. Using WPF can make your add-ins look built into the Office applications themselves, providing a better user experience.

This article describes one piece of the Northwind Office Business Application (OBA) sample we created in the beginning of the year so if you’re just getting started in OBA development with Outlook, Word, Excel and Sharepoint I’d suggest reading these as well:

OBA Part 1 - Exposing Line-of-Business Data

OBA Part 2 - Building and Outlook Client against LOB Data

OBA Part 3 - Storing and Reading Data in Word Documents

OBA Part 4 - Building an Excel Client against LOB Data

OBA Part 5 - Building the SharePoint 2007 Workflow

The full sample application, built with Visual Studio 2008, is here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/OBANorthwind

Hmm… I’m thinking a part 6 on deployment of this baby would be a good follow up….

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Quick Videos of Visual Studio 2010 Features (Beth Massi, Mary Lee)

VSTO Team — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:38:55 GMT

If you’ve missed them, Kathleen has been interviewing writers on various documentation teams on some of the new features going into Visual Studio 2010. Our own Mary Lee now has a couple video interviews posted on new VSTO features that you should check out:

If you like reading better than watching videos, here are the walkthroughs in the MSDN library:

For more resources and information on how to download the VS2010 Beta, visit the Visual Studio Developer Center.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Community Article: Automate Common Office Tasks (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:34:37 GMT

If you haven’t seen it yet, we’ve got a new article from Robert Green (MVP) up on the VSTO Dev Center. In this article, learn how you can use Visual Studio to build application-level add-ins that automate common Microsoft Office tasks. It’s a good introduction to Office development with Visual Studio so check it out!

Create an Application-Level Add-In to Automate Common Office Tasks

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

VSTO Bug Tracker (Eric Carter, Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:16:30 GMT

Eric Carter released a sample and series of articles based on his TechEd demo last week that shows you how to bring bug data from TFS into Excel and Word using VSTO so it can be further analyzed.

If you you went to TechEd but missed the session you can watch it here if you’ve registered:

Advanced Microsoft Office Word and Excel 2007 Development in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with Visual Studio Tools for Office

Everyone can download the sample here.

And don’t forget to check the VSTO Dev Center often for more news, articles, videos, and samples.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Channel 9 Interview: Resigning ClickOnce Application and Deployment Manifests with MAGE (Beth Massi, Saurabh Bhatia)

VSTO Team — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:25:33 GMT

I just posted another interview on Channel 9. I sit down again with Saurabh Bhatia, a Program Manager on the Office Client team, who is responsible for the ClickOnce publishing functionality in Visual Studio. We chat about trust issues and certificates and he sets me straight on how ClickOnce deployment and application manifests work. He then shows how to resign them outside of Visual Studio using a tool called Mage. This is really handy for folks that need to modify the files within a deployment package, like the application settings (app.config) file, but don't have Visual Studio installed.

Channel 9: Resigning ClickOnce Application and Deployment Manifests with MAGE

Saurabh draws on the whiteboard in this one and since I'm a one (wo)man show I couldn't jump up and zoom in so I redrew it for you all here.

Links from the show:

VSTO Developer Center

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Showcasing the VSTO Power Tools… (Mary Lee)

VSTO Team — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:34:00 GMT

The latest .NET Rocks! TV video includes an interview with Beth Massi where she shows how to use the VSTO Power Tools! Also, she introduces some other minor features that you may have heard of: Open XML SDK and LINQ.

Check out Beth’s summary of the video and her demo at her blog: dnrTV: Showing off the Open XML SDK and LINQ.

Mary Lee, Programming Writer.

Building Office Business Applications with Visual Studio

VSTO Team — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:01:00 GMT

This week Microsoft is hosting an internal even called Tech Ready 8 in Seattle. Microsoft technical field reps and product teams come together to talk about all of the great products we're building. I presented a session on Building Office Development Applications with Visual Studio along with a couple team members. In preparation for that session we spent the past week building a demo application that surfaces LOB data exposed as an ADO .NET dataservices in Outlook and Excel clients and SharePoint. Beth Massi is doing a blog series on how we wrote the soloution. Check it out.

New "How Do I" Video on Creating Smart Tags in Word (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Our very own Mary Lee has got a new video up on the Dev Center on programming smart tags in with custom recognizers in Word using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. This is a video version of the How To topic in the MSDN library.

Watch or download the video here.

Thanks Mary!

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community