“With the application development community so focused on the Smart Client revolution, a book that covers VSTO from A to Z is both important and necessary. This book lives up to big expectations. It is thorough, has tons of example code, and covers Office programming in general terms—topics that can be foreign to the seasoned .NET developer who has focused on ASP.NET applications for years. Congratulations to Eric Lippert and Eric Carter for such a valuable work!” —Tim Huckaby, CEO, InterKnowlogy, Microsoft regional director “This book covers in a clear and concise way all of the ins and outs of programming with Visual Studio Tools for Office. Given the authors’ exhaustive experiences with this subject, you can’t get a more authoritative description of VSTO than this book!” —Paul Vick, technical lead, Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Corporation“Eric and Eric really get it. Professional programmers will love the rich power of Visual Studio and .NET, along with the ability to tap into Office programmability. This book walks you through programming Excel, Word, InfoPath, and Outlook solutions.” —Vernon W. Hui, test lead, Microsoft Corporation “This book is an in-depth, expert, and definitive guide to programming using Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005. It is a must-have book for anyone doing Office development.” —Siew Moi Khor, programmer/writer, Microsoft Corporation “We don’t buy technical books for light reading. We buy them as a resource for developing a solution. This book is an excellent resource for someone getting started with Smart Client development. For example, it is common to hear a comment along the lines of, ‘It is easy to manipulate the Task Pane in Office 2003 using VSTO 2005,’ but until you see something like the example at the start of Chapter 15, it is hard to put ‘easy’ into perspective. This is a thorough book that covers everything from calling Office applications from your application, to building applications that are Smart Documents. It allows the traditional Windows developer to really leverage the power of Office 2003.” —Bill Sheldon, principal engineer, InterKnowlogy, MVP “Eric Carter and Eric Lippert have been the driving force behind Office development and Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005. The depth of their knowledge and understanding of VSTO and Office is evident in this book. Professional developers architecting enterprise solutions using VSTO 2005 and Office System 2003 now have a new weapon in their technical arsenal.” —Paul Stubbs, program manager, Microsoft Corporation “This book is both a learning tool and a reference book, with a richness of tables containing object model objects and their properties, methods, and events. I would recommend it to anyone considering doing Office development using the .NET framework, especially people interested in VSTO programming.” —Rufus Littlefield, software design engineer/tester, Microsoft CorporationVisual Studio Tools for Office is both the first and the definitive book on VSTO 2005 programming, written by the inventors of the technology. VSTO is a set of tools that allows professional developers to use the full power of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework to put code behind Excel 2003, Word 2003, Outlook 2003, and InfoPath 2003. VSTO provides functionality never before available to the Office developer: data binding and data/view separation, design-time views of Excel and Word documents inside Visual Studio, rich support for Windows Forms controls in a document, the ability to create custom Office task panes, server-side programming support against Office, and much more. Carter and Lippert cover their subject matter with deft insight into the needs of .NET developers learning VSTO. This book Explains the architecture of Microsoft Office programming and introduces the object models Teaches the three basic patterns of Office solutions: Office automation executables, Office add-ins, and code behind a document Explores the ways of customizing Excel, Word, Outlook, and InfoPath, and plumbs the depths of programming with their events and object models Introduces the VSTO programming model Teaches how to use Windows Forms in VSTO and how to work with the Actions Pane Delves into VSTO data programming and server data scenarios Explores .NET code security and VSTO deployment Advanced material covers working with XML in Word and Excel, developing COM add-ins for Word and Excel, and creating Outlook add-ins with VSTO. The complete code samples are available on the book’s Web page.

Table of Contents:
Figures xxxiTables xlvForeword xlixPreface liiiAcknowledgments lviiAbout the Authors lixPart I: An Introduction to VSTO 1Chapter 1: An Introduction to Office Programming 3Why Office Programming? 3 Office Object Models 6 Properties, Methods, and Events 12 The Office Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs) 34 Conclusion 43 Chapter 2: Introduction to Office Solutions 45The Three Basic Patterns of Office Solutions 45 Office Automation Executables 49 Office Add-Ins 60 Code Behind a Document 65 Conclusion 72 Part II: Office Programming in .NET 73Chapter 3: Programming Excel 75Ways to Customize Excel 75 Programming User-Defined Functions 83 Introduction to the Excel Object Model 92 Conclusion 98 Chapter 4: Working with Excel Events 99Events in the Excel Object Model 99 Events in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office 138 Conclusion 142 Chapter 5: Working with Excel Objects 143Working with the Application Object 143 Working with the Workbooks Collection 157 Working with the Workbook Object 161 Working with the Worksheets, Charts, and Sheets Collections 169 Working with Document Properties 172 Working with the Windows Collections 175 Working with the Window Object 179 Working with the Names Collection and Name Object 181 Working with the Worksheet Object 183 Working with the Range Object 197 Special Excel Issues 213 Conclusion 220 Chapter 6: Programming Word 223Ways to Customize Word 223 Programming Research Services 229 Introduction to the Word Object Model 237 Conclusion 238 Chapter 7: Working with Word Events 243Events in the Word Object Model 243 Why Are There Multiple Application and Document Event Interfaces? 244 Events in Visual Studio Tools for Office 273 Conclusion 275 Chapter 8: Working with Word Objects 277Working with the Application Object 277 Working with the Dialog Object 299 Working with Windows 304 Working with Templates 307 Working with Documents 310 Working with a Document 315 Working with the Range Object 335 Working with Bookmarks 358 Working with Tables 360 Conclusion 362 Chapter 9: Programming Outlook 363Ways to Customize Outlook 363 Custom Property Pages 370 Introduction to the Outlook Object Model 378 Introduction to the Collaboration Data Objects 382 Conclusion 386 Chapter 10: Working with Outlook Events 387Events in the Outlook Object Model 387 Application-Level Events 392 Outlook Item Events 405 Other Events 419 Conclusion 422 Chapter 11: Working with Outlook Objects 423Working with the Application Object 423 Working with the Explorers and Inspectors Collections 431 Working with the Explorer Object 433 Working with the Inspector Object 440 Working with the NameSpace Object 443 Working with the MAPIFolder Object 450 Working with the Items Collection 459 Properties and Methods Common to Outlook Items 466 Outlook Issues 486 Conclusion 492 Chapter 12: Introduction to InfoPath 493What Is InfoPath? 493 Getting Started 494 Form Security 499 Programming InfoPath 505 Data Source Events 509 Form Events, Properties, and Methods 518 Conclusion 529 Part III: Office Programming in VSTO 531Chapter 13: The VSTO Programming Model 533The VSTO Programming Model 533 VSTO Extensions to Word and Excel Objects 536 Dynamic Controls 542 Inspecting the Generated Code 549 VSTO Extensions to the Word and Excel Object Models 555 Conclusion 569 Chapter 14: Using Windows Forms in VSTO 571Introduction 571 Adding Windows Forms Controls to Your Document 577 Writing Code Behind a Control 584 The Windows Forms Control Hosting Architecture 585 Properties Merged from OLEObject or OLEControl 594 Adding Controls at Runtime 597 Conclusion 605 Chapter 15: Working with the Actions Pane 607Introduction to the Actions Pane 607 Working with the ActionsPane Control 613 Conclusion 628 Chapter 16: Working with Smart Tags in VSTO 629Introduction to Smart Tags 629 Creating Document-Level Smart Tags with VSTO 633 Creating Application-Level Smart Tags 647 Conclusion 672 Chapter 17: VSTO Data Programming 673Creating a Data-Bound Customized Spreadsheet with VSTO 673 Creating a Data-Bound Customized Word Document with VSTO 681 Datasets, Adapters, and Sources 682 Another Technique for Creating Data-Bound Spreadsheets 691 Caching Data in the Data Island 699 Advanced ADO.NET Data Binding: Looking Behind the Scenes 704 Binding-Related Extensions to Host Items and Host Controls 705 Conclusion 712 Chapter 18: Server Data Scenarios 713Populating a Document with Data on the Server 713 Using ServerDocument and ASP.NET 716 A Handy Client-Side ServerDocument Utility 724 The ServerDocument Object Model 726 Conclusion 737 Chapter 19: .NET Code Security 739Code-Access Security Versus Role-Based Security 740 Code-Access Security in .NET 741 Location, Location, Location 749 Strong Names 753 Publisher Certificates 761 Trusting the Document 765 Deploying Policy to User Machines 769 Conclusion 773 Chapter 20: Deployment 775VSTO Prerequisites 776 Deploying to an Intranet Shared Directory or Web Site 777 Local Machine Deployment Without a Deployment Manifest 785 Editing Manifests 787 Creating Setup Packages 793 Conclusion 805 Part IV: Advanced Office Programming 807Chapter 21: Working with XML in Excel 809Introduction to Excel’s XML Features 809 Introduction to XML Schema Creation in Visual Studio 811 An End-to-End Scenario 816 Advanced XML Features in Excel 826 Excel-Friendly XML Schemas 830 VSTO Support for Excel Schema Mapping 833 Conclusion 849 Chapter 22: Working with XML in Word 851Introduction to Word’s XML Features 851 An End-to-End Scenario: Creating a Schema and Mapping It into a Word Document 855 Exporting the Mapped XML in the Document to an XML Data File 869 Importing an XML Data File into the Mapped Document 871 The XML Options Dialog Box 877 VSTO Support for Word Schema Mapping 880 VSTO Support for the WordML File Format 888 Conclusion 889 Chapter 23: Developing COM Add-Ins for Word and Excel 891Introduction to Add-Ins 891 Scenarios for Using Add-Ins 892 How a COM Add-In Is Registered 893 Implementing IDTExtensibility2 897 Writing a COM Add-In Using Visual Studio 904 The Pitfalls of mscoree.dll 914 COM Interop and regasm.exe 914 Shimming: A Solution to the Problems with mscoree.dll 919 Conclusion 920 Chapter 24: Creating Outlook Add-Ins with VSTO 921Moving Away from COM Add-Ins 921 Creating an Outlook Add-In in VSTO 933 Conclusion 940 Bibliography 941Index 943