Office Development with Visual Studio : Community

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 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

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

Sign up for Office 2010 Technical Preview

VSTO Team — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:36:36 GMT

I’m at TechEd in LA, but it seems I could get just as much excitement just watching the Twittersphere today and watching #tela09 tags! And my feet are killing me. So be glad you’re sitting at your computer instead of walking around Los Angeles! Let me give you some highlights for Office developers:

Watch the Keynotes which include Office 2010 demos. Also some interviews on Office and SharePoint on the same TechEd site.

Office 2010 The Movie: Countdown to Awesome is the new site where you can watch a slick video and more importantly, click the Sign up for the Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Preview. When you click the link they show you the “fine print” which I will now print in large font:

By registering you are signing up to be considered for the Technical Preview Program, you will be waitlisted for consideration to be invited into the Technical Preview Program. We will notify invitees in early to mid July.

“What does that mean?” you ask. Well, it means that Microsoft wants to collect a wide variety of customer-types and ensure that our TechPreview covers all the different types of customers. For example, the sign-up form asks if you will test the Tech Preview at Home or Work. Be honest in your answer because we truly want to get perspectives from all types of Office users. Similarly the survey asks the size of your company and if you read Japanese. There is no trick to get invited.

If you don’t get invited, then don’t fret. We’ll give you some useful information on this blog and other Office blogs to help you prepare your business for the future. For now, I encourage you to build great solutions for Office using all of the resources at Microsoft including Visual Studio, VBA, Open XML SDK, code samples, Forum support, Code Gallery, and the Office Developer Center.

Sincerely, Christin Boyd, Program Manager

TechEd Sessions on Office Development

VSTO Team — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:16:02 GMT

If you’re going to TechEd in Los Angeles next week, then don’t miss these four sessions:

DTL03-INT Meet the Microsoft Visual Studio Team
Christin Boyd, Eric Carter, Paul Yuknewicz, Jay Schmelzer, Dustin Campbell, Jonathan Aneja, Luke Hoban, Igor Zinkovsky, Faisal Nasir, Harry Pierson, Lisa Feigenbaum
Mon 5/11 2:45 PM-4:00 PM | Blue Theater 1

OFC325 Building Custom Applications in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Ty Anderson, Damon Armstrong
Tue 5/12 2:45 PM-4:00 PM | Room 408A

DTL324 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Overview for the Business Application Developer
Jay Schmelzer
Tue 5/12 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Room 515B

OFC324
Advanced Microsoft Office Word and Excel 2007 Development in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with Visual Studio Tools for Office
Eric Carter
Thursday 5/14 1:00PM-2:15PM | Room 515A

Of course, there are a dozen other sessions that appeal to Office developers and SharePoint developers. These are the four that I highly recommend. Originally I was going to list the 3 not-to-be-missed sessions, but then I couldn’t drop any of these from my list, so we have 4 Must See Sessions!

If you’re not going to TechEd, then please click the links on these speakers’ names to read their blogs where the will eventually post some of their demo code. Expect the posts to happen the Monday after their sessions. In the case of Eric Carter, he would probably love it if you’d buy his book, Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007: VSTO for Excel, Word and Outlook. Or you could just download a zip file with all of the of code from the book here. That should keep you busy for a while. The explanations in the book really do add to the overall value. I should credit the co-author, Eric Lippert. Both men are brilliant and funny, and very modest. At the Holiday Party this year, Eric Carter got up to sing karaoke and astounded us all with a bouncy rendition of “Sesame Street.”

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager, Visual Studio

Ich bin ein VSTO

VSTO Team — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:18:31 GMT

I hope I didn’t say “I am a doughnut.” For native German speakers, you may already know about Lars Keller, a recent recipient of the Visual Studio MVP Award. When the localized Help files and documentation aren’t enough, it helps to read technical content in your own language. Lars writes a developer blog with quite a few Office development entries:

Lars Keller ...inspired by .NET

All about .NET, VSTS, VSTO and more

Lars also co-founded an aggregation of many German language blogs and event announcements about Visual Studio Tools for Office:

VSTO Taskforce

Alles zum Thema Visual Studio Tools for Office

You can find more non-English content written and aggregated by two other VSTO MVPs, Ryosuke Uemoto and Pablo Pelaez Aller. You can find a Japanese blog on VSTO, a Japanese blog on VSTO and other Developer topics, and a Spanish blog on VSTO.

If you know of other non-English web sites with great Office development content, then please leave a comment.

-Christin Boyd, Program Manager, Visual Studio

Office Development with Visual Studio Developer Center Just Launched! (Beth Massi)

VSTO Team — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:50:17 GMT

Everything you need to know about building Office solutions in Visual Studio is on the new Office Development with Visual Studio Developer Center! (update your bookmarks: http://msdn.com/vsto)

- Right on the home page meet MVPs and members of the product team who share tips, tricks, presentations, and trip reports about meeting developers like you.

- Download code samples and tools that showcase Office and Visual Studio features or access shared source projects on Codeplex that are using Visual Studio to build Office solutions.

- Watch educational and entertaining videos about Office development, watch team interviews and demonstrations.

- Learn new skills by browsing the learning resources by topic or learning type as well as get easy access to the MSDN library resources you need.

- Meet your forum moderators and access other developer community resources.

- Get quick access to news and featured resources and take a peek at what’s coming in Visual Studio 2010!

Make it your new home today. :-)

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community