jwiese

Using WPF in Office Add-Ins

John Wiese — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:49:00 GMT

With WPF becoming more and more prevalent I thought it would be a good idea to revisit using WPF in office add-ins. Way back when we launched Office 2007 one of the demo’s we did was an Outlook add-in that used a WPF control on an Outlook Form Region. I’m not going to get that complex in this screencast, but I will show you how to host a simple WPF control on a WinForm and display that as a result of a Send event inside Outlook.

I hope all you WPF developers begin looking to Outlook as a platform and that the Office developers see some of the advantages of using WPF inside your Office add-ins.

Publishing an Office add-in to a SharePoint Site for Distribution

John Wiese — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:10:00 GMT

I've been asked many times, "How do I publish my VSTO/Office Add-in installation files to a SharePoint site?". It's relatively straight-forward to publish to a basic web site, or to a UNC file share, but SharePoint is a slightly different beast.

So, how do you publish your add-in to a SharePoint site? Well, if you watch this short five and half minute video you will get the skinny on how to do just that. There are a few basic steps that need to be done in order to accompllish this that I will walk you through in the video, enjoy!

.NET 4, VS 2010 and Office: New Features in VS 2010 for Developers

John Wiese — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Now that .NET 4 and VS 2010 are out, at least in Beta, I thought it would be a good time to show off some of the new features that are applicable to Office development. In this second (see the first one here) screencast I will cover a new feature of Visual Studio 2010 for Office PIA (Primary Interop Assembly) references. You can now Embed the needed references directly into your executable so there is no longer a need for the PIAs to be on the client machine!

.NET 4, VS 2010 and Office: New Features in .NET 4 for Office Developers

John Wiese — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:18:00 GMT

Now that .NET 4 and VS 2010 are out, at least in Beta, I thought it would be a good time to show off some of the new features that are applicable to Office development. In this first screencast I will cover something new to C# specifically, optional paramters, as well as Lambda expressions.

Look for my next screencast tomorrow on removing the PIA dependency from your distribution!

Adding Tabs to a TabSet in Office 2007 Apps

John Wiese — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:47:00 GMT

You may have noticed, say in Powerpoint, that when you click on a Chart that you've inserted there is a cool little grouping of tabs that happens. You'll see that you get a "Chart Tools" tab set created in the title bar that shows you that the Design, Layout and Format tabs all apply to charts.

You can add your own tabs to these tab sets, or add groups to a tab within the tab set, this video will show you how.

How to Send Just a few Slides from PowerPoint as an Email Attachment

John Wiese — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Ever wanted to send someone just one or two slides from a PowerPoint deck? Have you gone through the painful process of deleting all the slides you didn't want to send and then saving it as a new deck, then sending it? Or maybe you've copied the ones you wanted and then pasted them into a new deck before sending? Worse yet, did you copy them and past them directly into the email as images and thus make your email to big to send? Ok, you get the picture.

This is a common occurence around Microsoft too, at least I thought it was. And given the internal responses I've received from around the world to my new add-in, I wasn't too far off.

So, I thought I'd share the "how-to" with everyone else. Enjoy!

Adding Search to Outlook Context Menus

John Wiese — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:55:00 GMT

Outlook 2007 added instant search, but why should you have to type in the same query over and over? You shouldn't, so how about an add-in that adds your common searches to the context menu in Outlook. In this screencast I'll show you how to add some simple searches to the context menu so you can access those searches when ever you like, without having to type them into the instant search box.

Outlook Context Menus and Creating a Meeting from an Email

John Wiese — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:12:00 GMT

Would you like to add your own menu option to the context menu in Outlook? How about turning an email into a new meeting request without having to type in all the attendees or the body and subject?

Well, in this screencast I'll show you how to add to the context menu and generate a meeting request that includes the email's recipients, subject and body in the meeting details.

In the talk I reference the OutlookItem.cs class, details of which you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/4g7x64

LINQ to DASL: Changing Appointments with C# and LINQ

John Wiese — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:17:00 GMT

A few weeks back, shortly after the release of the Visual Studio Tools for Office Power Tools, I did an overview screencast to let you know a little about the different tools. In this screencast I wanted to show a cool little sample of how you might use LINQ to DASL to modify appointments in your calendar in batch instead of by hand. If you don't already have the VSTO Power Tools you can get them here.

Intro to the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Power Tools 1.0

John Wiese — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The recently released VSTO Power Tools provide some great capabilities for Office developers. The Extension Libraries alone could save you hours of work, and you can get then for free! In this short video I will introduce you to a few of the main Power Tools in the package and briefly talk about a few of the other tools as well. So sit back, enjoy, then start coding!

VSTO Power Tools 1.0 Download

Placing Your Custom Ribbon Bar Tab Between Office Built-In Tabs

John Wiese — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:39:34 GMT

Have you ever created your own Office 2007 ribbon bar tab and wanted to place it on the ribbon bar someplace other than the end of the ribbon bar? You can do this, and all you need is one download and some simple instructions.

List of Control IDs

In this short 5 minute screencast I'll show you how to use Visual Studio 2008 to create a Word 2007 add-in with a custom ribbon bar using the visual designer and place that ribbon anyplace you want on the Word ribbon bar.

Adding Controls to the Same Tab Group from Multiple Add-ins

John Wiese — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:13:44 GMT

Are you building software on top of Office? Do you have multiple add-ins that may or may not get loaded together? Would you like to have all your add-ins place their ribbon bar controls in the same group on the same tab? If you answered yes, then this video will help you to do that. In the video I'll walk you through two simple Excel Add-ins that each add a button to the same tab group on the same tab.

Using Office 2007 Icons in Your Office 2007 Add-ins

John Wiese — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:04:43 GMT

Have you ever wanted to use one of the Office 2007 icons in your own add-in's ribbon bars? In the past you could do this only if you knew the name of the icon. Now there is a way to find those names easier with a small download (excel sheet) from the Microsoft download site:

Office Icon Galery download

In this short 5 minute screencast I'll show you how to use 'Orcas' Beta 2 to create a Word 2007 template file with a custom ribbon bar using the visual designer. I then will customize the button on the ribbon bar with an Office icon showing you how to find the name of the icon you want to use.