Office Development with Visual Studio : Harry Miller

Word Add-ins Part 3: Search for Text Strings in Documents and Add Comments (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:49:40 GMT

You can search the text in any open Microsoft Office Word document for specific strings if you put the code in an application-level add-in. When you find an instance of the string, you can perform some action on it. This video shows how to flag the string with a comment that contains text passed in from a calling method.

The code comes from the forum thread that's linked below, under "Related resources." You could just look at it there, but then you'd miss the whole "why did he get knocked in the head last time" thing. Oh, the title is different in the video because no one would search the Web for "to hunt lives the add-in" to answer this question, but I think it's a much more dramatic title for a video about an add-in that searches for stuff, after you've already found the video.

Related resources:

Forum: Look for a string and comment it - how?

How to: Search for Text in Documents

How to: Set Search Options in Word

Find Object (Word 2007 Reference)

Duration: 3 minutes, 39 seconds

Word Add-ins Part 2: When Add-ins Collide (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:43:00 GMT

When you build an add-in project, it installs the add-in on your development computer. Even if you close that project and start another, or even close Visual Studio entirely, all add-ins you have built will still run when you start the Office application on that computer. If you're not expecting the add-in to run, you might be surprised by what you see the next time you open the application or test a new project. This video shows how to easily uninstall add-ins from your development computer after you build them if you don't want them to run any more. Basically, you run Clean Solution, which is on the Build menu. But watch the video for proof!

Related resources:

Forum: Multiple add-ins running

Office Solution Build Process Overview

Duration: 2 minutes, 50 seconds

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Word Add-ins Part 1: Clear the Ribbon Except for My Controls (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:48:56 GMT

You can easily customize the Ribbon to show only the controls you want to display. This video shows how to clear the Ribbon in Microsoft Office Word so it contains only a single button. The button inserts a graphic into the open Word document at the cursor location. Why? Well, really it's just to demo the Ribbon thing. But some day you might want to insert images into a document too, who knows?

Related resources

Forum: Ribbon and Start from Scratch

OfficeRibbon.StartFromScratch Property

Duration: 4 minutes, 11 seconds

Create an Excel Shortcut Menu That Writes Selected Values to a Text File (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:14:59 GMT

It doesn't take much code to add a command to a shortcut menu in Excel, but the menu objects have strange names so it's not intuitive, to me at least. The trickiest part is just sorting out how it's supposed to work, because it seems like it should be different from adding buttons to toolbars, but it really looks like that's what you're doing.

You can watch the video and make me happy, or you can just jump to the code example that's all given a little lower down. Thanks to McLean Schofield, programmer/writer and 3-star forum answer person, for this code example!

Duration: 3 minutes, 50 seconds.

Public Class ThisAddIn

Private WithEvents writeToText As Office.CommandBarButton
Private selectedCells As Excel.Range

Private Sub ThisAddIn_Startup(ByVal sender _
As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Startup

DefineShortcutMenu()
End Sub

Private Sub DefineShortcutMenu()

        Dim menuItem As Office.MsoControlType = Office.MsoControlType.msoControlButton
        writeToText = Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls.Add(Type:=menuItem, _
            Before:=1, Temporary:=True)

        writeToText.Style = Office.MsoButtonStyle.msoButtonCaption
        writeToText.Caption = "Write to a Text File"
        writeToText.Tag = "0"
    End Sub

    Private Sub Application_SheetBeforeRightClick(ByVal Sh _
        As Object, ByVal Target As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range, _
        ByRef Cancel As Boolean) Handles Application.SheetBeforeRightClick

selectedCells = Target
End Sub

Private Sub writeToText_Click(ByVal Ctrl As Office.CommandBarButton, _
ByRef CancelDefault As Boolean) Handles writeToText.Click

        Try
            Dim currentDateTime As System.DateTime = _
                System.DateTime.Now
            Dim dateStamp As String = _
                currentDateTime.ToString("dMMMMyyyy_hh.mm.ss")

            Dim fileName As String = System.Environment.GetFolderPath( _
                Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments) & "\\" & _
                dateStamp & ".txt"
            Dim sw As System.IO.StreamWriter = New System.IO.StreamWriter(fileName)

            For Each cell As Excel.Range In selectedCells.Cells
                If cell.Value2 IsNot Nothing Then
                    sw.WriteLine(cell.Value2.ToString())
                End If
            Next
            sw.Close()
        Catch ex As Exception
            System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
        End Try

End Sub

End Class

Activating a Custom Tab on the Ribbon When a Document Is Opened (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:36:00 GMT

A lot of people would like to do this. It makes sense that a developer would want to select the custom tab automatically, if the controls that are most useful for the current document are all on that tab. This video goes in-depth about this programming question.

OK, not really. The video just says you can't do it, because the Ribbon is designed with the idea of leaving the user in control of the UI -- no surprise selection changes. But you should watch the video anyway. It's really short, and, you know, kinda funny.

Related resources

Forum: Is there a way to activate a certain tab on the Ribbon?

Duration: 1 minute, 8 seconds

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Automatic project conversion / migration (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:47:14 GMT

By default, Visual Studio automatically converts Office 2003 projects into Office 2007 projects when you open the project, if you have the 2007 Office system installed on your development computer. But you can change that default behavior.

Resources

Forum: Visual Studio 2008 converts its own Office 2003 project

Upgrading and migrating Office solutions

Project upgrade, options dialog box

Andrew Whitechapel's blog: Why is VS development not supported with multiple versions of Office?

Duration: 1 minute, 49 seconds

Removing Customization Code Before E-Mailing a Document (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:54:00 GMT

When you create a document-level customization for a document, all the copies of the document will be customized too. Even if you save a copy of the document with a different name, when the document is opened it'll try to find and run the code. All the saved data will still be there, it'll just pop up an annoying error message.

In this video I show a couple of ways to remove a customization from a document before you send it to someone.

Resources

ServerDocument.RemoveCustomization Method (2007 System)

ServerDocument.RemoveCustomization Method (2003 System)

ServerDocument Sample

Managing Documents on a Server by Using the ServerDocument Class

Duration: 2 minutes, 19 seconds

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Assembly Could Not Be Found or Could Not Be Loaded (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:54:51 GMT

This video tells the story of someone who created an Excel 2003 workbook project in Visual Studio 2008. No matter what configuration he tried on the client machine, he got this error when opening the workbook:

The assembly could not be found or could not be loaded.

Here's the setup:
Windows XP Professional
PIAs for Office 2003 are installed
VSTO version 3 runtime is installed
The .NET 2.0 configuration tool shows the assembly is trusted
CASPOL.exe shows the assembly is trusted

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.

Resources:

Forum post: The assembly * could not be found at or could not be loaded

Visual Studio Tools for Office Second Edition Runtime

How to: Install the Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime

Video duration: 1 minute, 36 seconds

Catching Save or SaveAs in Word 2007 (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:57:00 GMT

You can override Ribbon commands and run your own code for Save or Save As, or you can simply cancel attempts to save a document in the DocumentBeforeSave event handler.

Code and resources:

Forum post: Microsoft Word 2007 Disable Save As

Temporarily Repurpose Commands on the Office Fluent Ribbon

DocumentBeforeSave event

Video duration: 51 seconds

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WPF in Office Solutions (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:01:56 GMT

A few months ago, Andrew Whitechapel wrote an article and sample application that demonstrates combining the native capabilities of an Office client application with the UI capabilities of WPF. Behind the UI, the application is connected to remote data and services via WCF and uses the RAD features of LINQ to manipulate that data.

Some related questions have come up in the forum recently, so McLean Schofield took the sample application and made a short video overview of the WPF control part. You can find the full explanation and get the code from these articles:

Build Office-Based Solutions Using WPF, WCF, And LINQ - MSDN Magazine article by Andrew Whitechapel

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163292.aspx

Andrew Whitechapel's blog post, which has a link to updated code

http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww/archive/2007/11/26/vsto-wpf-wcf-linq-msdn-article.aspx

Video duration: 4 minutes, 23 seconds

Microsoft Office Developer Show Episode 5 (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:52:09 GMT

In this episode: a tip about setting the background color of a custom task pane to match the Office theme, and about calling functions in add-ins from other add-ins. Plus, Mary creates an Outlook add-in that helps her remember attachments.

Duration: 5 minutes, 4 seconds

Related resources for more information:

Forum post: Custom task pane back color

Forum post: Use code of one add-in from another add-in

Article: Calling Code in Application-Level Add-ins from Other Office Solutions

Outlook Application.ItemSend Event

Outlook MailItem.Attachments Property

Outlook MailItem.Body Property

Microsoft Office Developer Show Episode 4 (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:16:17 GMT

In this episode: a tip about saving and restoring the position of custom toolbars in Outlook 2007, and how to copy values from one worksheet and paste them in another. Plus, Mary finishes her Excel application and sends it to her boss in e-mail.

Duration: 4 minutes, 33 seconds

Related resources for more information:

Forum post: Saving toolbar positions in Outlook 2007

How to: Maintain Position Information for Custom Toolbars between Outlook Sessions

Forum post: Excel sheet CopySpecial having problem in xlPaste type

Range.PasteSpecial Method

Microsoft Office Developer Show Episode 3 (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:01:22 GMT

In this episode: a tip about serializing data in a Word document so users can't see it, and why content controls disappear from documents if you add them at run time. Plus, Mary customizes the Ribbon in Excel so her boss Kemp doesn't need to use button controls on the worksheet itself.

Duration: 5 minutes, 29 seconds

Related resources for more information:

Serializing data and recreating content controls

Document variables property and code example

Caching data objects

How to cache data and code example

How to add content controls to documents and code example

AddPlainTextContentControl method and code example

Office development audio series 3 is now available (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:32:20 GMT

This series focuses on development tasks that are common as part of developing Office solutions, and describes the tools in Visual Studio 2008 that help you do these tasks quicker. The series is organized as short, five-minute episodes that you can listen to while you drive, travel, exercise, eat lunch, or whenever you usually listen to your portable MP3 player. (Of course, you can also listen at your computer with your usual media player.) You can get all eleven episodes individually or as a zipped group from this Microsoft Download Center page:

Audio: Office Development Developer Series

There's also a zipped file that contains transcripts for each episode.

Let us know what you think about these by leaving a comment on this post--we'd like to get your feedback.

If you want to start with a broader overview, you can listen to the other two series:

Audio: Office Development Overview Series
Audio: Office Development Components Series

Microsoft Office Developer Show Episode 2 (Harry Miller)

VSTO Team — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:14:00 GMT

In this episode: a tip about how to save a new copy of a Word document instead of saving over the original, and how to create a class in an Outlook project to access methods without hitting the object model security prompts. Plus, Mary creates a quick data UI in Excel for her boss Kemp.

Related resources for more information:

Save a new copy of a document instead of saving over the original

Create a class in an Outlook project to access methods without hitting the object model security prompts

More about accessing Outlook from John R. Durant's blog