using research pane

[C Williams]

Hi.

Does anyone know how to use the research pane in Word/Excel to monitor
the word a user is currently typing in order to do something useful with
that information (e.g. check to see if the current word is a certain
name and then display some information about that person in the research
pane)?

Ideally, I could get Word/Excel to alert me every time a character has
been typed. That seems unlikely, though. One idea I have is to query
the document every so often and determine the word closest to the
cursor. Any better ideas?

Any insights you have would be appreciated!

Thanks!

-Casey

 

[clintonG]

Its done using Smart Tags.

Google: "smarttags"
Google: "smart tags"

 

[C Williams]

Okay, thanks--as I understand them, smart tags can be useful as people
type.

I think those will be very useful, but I would also like to have the
ability to integrate with the research pane. Maybe it doesn't need to
be constantly updating (probably wouldn't make sense anyway), but it
would be very nice if I could auto-populate the research pane with some
text, based on the smart tag results. Almost as great would be if I
could automate a "search for" request. I can't seem to find the code
for doing this anywhere, and I'm beginning to doubt that it's possible.

Is there any way to write code to send a request of, say, "boston red
sox" to the research pane and then have it execute a query of one or
more web services?

Thanks again for any insights or comments!

-Casey

 

[clintonG]

Briefly and perhaps not as accurate as can be said, once the SmartTag has
been created it will light-up when any of the text the tag has been
developed to recognize is typed into the document or located with the
cursor. Highlighting the text can then send that text as a query string to a
service running in the task pane.

Check out the Getting Started resources [1].

--
<%= Clinton Gallagher, "Twice the Results -- Half the Cost"
Architectural & e-Business Consulting -- Software Development
NET (e-mail address removed)
URL http://www.metromilwaukee.com/clintongallagher/

[1]
http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/research/gettingstarted/default.aspx