Books on add-ins

[sp]

Hi,
I am looking into building an add-in for excel and word
a) From what I understand, there is visual studio for tools that helps us
build the add-ins easily. Where can I download that from?
b) It appears add-ins are newly introduced around 2003. By this technlogy,
one can build a compiled add-in, by way of dlls, and integrate that with
Excel/word. Before this, you could build add-ins using only VBA. Is this
correct?
c) Are there good books on building Add-ins using C# .net?

Thanks

 

[XL-Dennis]

hi sp,

a) From what I understand, there is visual studio for tools that helps us
build the add-ins easily. Where can I download that from?

The VSTO can only be obtained by buying a license. Except for that, the
present version (2.0) only support Outlook add-ins while the next version
(3.0) will include templates to create add-ins for Excel and Word.

In order to get started with VB.NET 2005 to create 'managed' COM add-ins
please see the following article:
A collection of articles about Managed COM Add-ins:
http://www.excelkb.com/article.aspx?id=10204

b) It appears add-ins are newly introduced around 2003. By this technlogy,
one can build a compiled add-in, by way of dlls, and integrate that with
Excel/word. Before this, you could build add-ins using only VBA. Is this
correct?

No, that's not correct. We can develop add-ins with VBA, classic VB / C++
(COM Add-ins and Automation Add-ins). VS.NET 2003/2005 also offer the ability
to create 'managed' COM Add-ins.

c) Are there good books on building Add-ins using C# .net?

The following book is the best one I've seen so please check it out:
Microsoft .NET Development for Microsoft Office
Andrew Whitechapel
MS Press
ISBN: 0-7356-2132-2

 

[Andrei Smolin]

Hello,

a) Visual Studio Tools for Office helps building add-ins but it is
still not so easy as you could imagine. Check out Add-in Express .NET
(www.add-in-express.com), which simplifies and speeds up add-in
development by introducing ready-to-use components required by every
add-in developer. You get the CommandBar component that allows using
custom and built-n toolbars and command bar controls, KeyboardShortcut
component, and Built-in Control Connector which is used to intercept
and control events of built-in controls. BTW, see also our free
Built-in Controls Scanner utility to find out the IDs of built-in
controls. See
http://www.add-in-express.com/downloads/controls-scanner.php. Add-in
Express .NET also supplies you with Event classes that simplify
processing of the Office events, especially in C#.

b) Not quite so, COM add-ins were introduced in Office 2000. The
development tools that supported COM add-in development were (and are)
Visual Basic 6, VC++. Visual Studios .NET introduced another way to
program COM add-ins. In a certain sense, this way is not so perfect as
we expected.

Andrei Smolin
www.add-in-express.com

 

[Nick Hebb]

I just started reading the Whitechapel book the other night. Maybe I
was just tired, but the first chapter of the book left me more confused
about PIA's and the distribution requirements than I was before I began
reading.

Anyone know of a good on-line tutorial that summarizes what I need to
do in order to make an add-in compatible back to Excel 2000?

Currently, with VB6, I do my development on a machine with Excel 2003
installed, but I do my builds in a Virtual PC vuirtual machine running
Excel 2000 on Windows 2000. Is it safe to assume that I would need a
similar setup (except with twice the RAM) to do the same thing with C#?

-- Nick Hebb
http://www.breezetree.com

 

[Nick Hebb]

Andrei,

I've looked at Add-in Express before. The web site seems to imply that
it handles the PIA issues but it doesn't explicitly state that. What
would Add-In Express do for me it I wanted to develop against Office
2000?

Thanks,

Nick Hebb
http://www.breezetree.com

 

[Cindy M.]

<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
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Hi Nick,

I just started reading the Whitechapel book the other night. Maybe I
was just tired, but the first chapter of the book left me more confused
about PIA's and the distribution requirements than I was before I began
reading.

So much of the material is new to me that I find myself re-reading a
chapter five or six times - and it still sounds new. But I'm beginning to
at least understand what I'm reading

Office 2003: don't try to distribute the PIAs - they should be installed
from the Office 2003 package.

Office 2002: you can re-distribute the PIAs you d/l from microsoft.com
and they should go into the GAC.

Office 2000: there are no PIAs. You have to use TlbImp.exe to generate a
set of IAs. These need to be distributed as part of your assembly and
should NOT be put in the GAC. (So every "supplier" will distribute their
own set of IAs for 2000).

Anyone know of a good on-line tutorial that summarizes what I need to
do in order to make an add-in compatible back to Excel 2000?

No... Especially since this scenario is explicitly NOT supported by
Microsoft.

Theoretically, it's possible to develop and compile a 2000 Addin,
distribute it with its IAs, and have it work in all versions of Excel.
This assumes that you program in VB.NET with Option Strict OFF OR use
GetType().InvokeMember (late-binding) for all automation calls where the
method signature is different in the different versions.

Currently, with VB6, I do my development on a machine with Excel 2003
installed, but I do my builds in a Virtual PC vuirtual machine running
Excel 2000 on Windows 2000. Is it safe to assume that I would need a
similar setup (except with twice the RAM) to do the same thing with C#?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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