Should this be an addin?

[Keith Giddings]

I want to write some code that will allow me to add some information to a
word document or an excel spreadsheet. In order to input the information I
need to execute an activex that I have written. However I want to be able
to click a button in Word or Excel (2000,XP & 2003), bring up a dialog that
contains the activex, grab the information and then store it in the
document. One issue is that I do not want to have to distribute my addin
with the document, I would simply like a pictorial representation to appear
at the current position for users that don't have my addin.

So, to the question. Is what I need to write an addin or should it be some
other entity?

Regards
Keith.

 

[Michael Böhnisch]

I don't know much about VBA, so I'd go for an add-in. The Visual Studio .NET 2003 office add-in wizard sets up everything read to go, it even creates an installer package automagically for the deployment

Debugging is nice, too, you can trace your add-in while it's running in an Office application

Documentation on Office programming in VC++ is hard to find, nearly all examples I encountered are for Visual Basic, so you may want to stick to that language

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Keith Giddings]

I don't know much about VBA, so I'd go for an add-in. The Visual
Studio .NET 2003 office add-in wizard sets up everything read to go,
it even creates an installer package automagically for the
deployment.

Thanks Michael - very useful.

Regards
Keith.

 

[Matrim Cauthon]

*snip*

Debugging is nice, too, you can trace your add-in while it's running in an Office application.

How can you obtain such an easily debugging your addin in VS .NET while running?

Thanks,

Mat.

 

[Michael Böhnisch]

My language version is not english, so I have to guess on the english menu names

In the project settings, go to "Debug". Under "Command" enter the full path of the Office application executable you designed your add-in for. For Outlook 2003 this might be something like
C:\Programs\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EX

Set breakpoints to the code lines you want to inspect and press F5. The office application will get started and it loads your add-in, As soon as one of the breakpoints is hit Visual Studio pops to the front and you can operate just like with any other code under debugger control

Kind regards

Michael