Office Developer: Difference between Office Web addin vs COM/VSTO addin

COM or VSTO add-ins are earlier Office integration solutions that run only on Office for Windows. The major difference what you see is that COM addins will be running in the user device or in the Office Client. The new Office Add-ins don’t involve code that runs on the user’s device or in the Office client. For an Office Add-in, the host application, for example Excel, reads the add-in manifest and hooks up the add-in’s custom ribbon buttons and menu commands in the UI. When needed, it loads the add-in’s JavaScript and HTML code, which executes in the context of a browser in a sandbox.

In general, Office Add-ins provides advantages over add-ins built using VBA, COM, or VSTO. I can name few of them,

• Cross-platform support:
  Office Add-ins run in Office for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Office Online. So your solution can run in Office across multiple platforms, including Office for Windows, Office Online, Office for the Mac, and Office for the iPad.

• Single sign-on (SSO):
  Office Add-ins integrate easily with users’ Office 365 accounts.

• Centralized deployment and distribution:
  Admins can deploy Office Add-ins centrally across an organization.

• Easy access via AppSource:
  You can make your solution available to a broad audience by submitting it to AppSource.

• Based on standard web technology:
  You can use any library you like to build Office Add-ins

Hope this helps.

Office 365 Developer: Build add-ins for Microsoft Outlook

In this video you will see Petra provides a brief overview of the Outlook add-in platform and its capabilities. The add-in platform helps developers create native Outlook solutions, so users can get more done within Outlook.

In short you can,
– Learn what makes up an add-in
– Get a high-level look at how to build one
– Learn about the features the platform has recently released
– Also know what’s coming in the future.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Connect/2017/T194/player

Happy coding!!

Office Dev: Office 2016 for developers

Last week we announced the release of Office 2016. Next interesting stuff pops in our mind is that what’s new in Office 2016 for the developers. I want to mention few of them here:

– New names for apps for Office and SharePoint – I blogged about this earlier, New name for Apps for Office and SharePoint? Office and SharePoint Add-ins
– Add-in commands for mail – Overview of add-in commands for mail
– Manifest for add-in commands – Create a manifest for add-in commands
– Provides access to properties for Office theme colors – Context.Theme property 

So the next question would be where to get started? Visit http://dev.office.com, check for http://dev.office.com/getting-started/addins and try it out.

In addition, you can refer the Office Dev blog post which talks more about it & make use of it.

Download: Outlook 2007 Add-ins & code samples

Whenever we discuss with regards to Outlook Add-in customization, many of our customer(s) or their developers want to customize it according to their requirements. Also they look for the code-samples, related articles to proceed further. In this discussion, i have added couple of Outlook 2007 specific add-ins, code samples along with their download links.

Please download the following Outlook add-ins along with the code-samples:

Outlook 2007 Add-Ins: RulesAddin, TravelAgencyAddin, and PrepareMeAddin
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F871C923-3C42-485D-83C7-10A54A92E8A2&displaylang=en

Please note: The Outlook 2007 Sample Add-Ins are a learning tool that will help you understand some of the important new features in the Outlook 2007 object model. Each sample is available in a version for Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE) in addition to the version based on the Outlook 2007 Sample: Visual Studio 2005 Templates.

They provide coverage of the following important new areas:

• Using the Rules object model, which allows you to programmatically create or access most rules supported by the Outlook Rules Wizard (Rules sample)


• Implementing a form region for an Outlook contact item (Travel Agency sample)


• Adding a custom task pane to an Outlook AppointmentItem (Prepare Me sample)

Outlook 2007 Sample: Ribbon Extensibility Add-In
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=11ab93bf-48dc-4f73-8f6b-62b4482a92bc&displaylang=en

Please note: The Outlook 2007 Ribbon Extensibility Add-In is a learning tool that will help you understand how to customize the Ribbon for Outlook Inspector windows. It provides coverage of the following important new areas:

• How legacy command bar customizations appear in an Outlook Inspector window


• How to implement the Office.IRibbonExtensibility interface in an Outlook add-in


• Providing Ribbon markup for Ribbon customization depending on the RibbonID string passed in the GetCustomUI callback


• Using the IRibbonControl.Context object to find an instance of an Inspector object


• Changing the state of Ribbon controls depending on the PropertyChange event for an Outlook item.

Outlook 2007 Sample: Visual Studio 2005 Templates
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0cab159a-0272-4635-b158-10553779a3df&displaylang=en

Please note: The Outlook 2007 Add-in Templates provide a basic template for developing Outlook 2007 add-ins using Visual Studio 2005. The templates are available in both Visual Basic and Visual C# languages. Each template includes the OutlookItem class, which enables developers to work with generic Outlook items through late-binding, without determining the item type first.

The templates also include wrapper classes that enable you to track multiple Outlook Inspector or Explorer windows. The templates provide an alternative to the Outlook add-in templates available with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Office system (VSTO 2005 Second Edition). VSTO 2005 SE is the preferred tool for developing add-ins for Outlook 2007. If you choose to build your add-in by using the Outlook 2007 Add-In Templates, you must add a COM Shim project and a Setup project to your add-in solution.

Outlook 2007 Add-In: Form Region Add-In
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=932b830f-bf8f-41fc-9962-07a741b21586&displaylang=en

Please note: The Outlook 2007 Form Region Add-ins are a learning tool that will help you understand how to design, build, and run custom form solutions based on Outlook form regions. They provide coverage of the following important new areas:

• Tracking the state of a form region across multiple windows


• Implementing the FormRegionStartup interface in an Outlook add-in


• Understanding the form region manifest XML


• Registering a form region with Outlook


• Storing form components as a project resource


• Deploying a form region solution

Outlook 2007 Sample: What’s New Add-Ins
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AABF127D-D069-4549-A1B1-667A698C3EF6&displaylang=en

Please note: The Outlook 2007 What’s New Add-Ins are a learning tool that will help you understand some of the important new features in the Outlook 2007 object model. They provide coverage of the following important new areas:

• Context menu customization


• The Table object model and Instant Search queries


• The PropertyAccessor object that allows getting or setting properties that are not explicitly exposed in the Outlook object model


• The Rules object model that allows programmatically creating or accessing most rules supported by the Outlook Rules Wizard


• The SelectNamesDialog object that displays the Outlook Address Book and lets you customize the dialog caption and recipient selectors


• Enhancements to the AddressEntry and AddressList objects, including the ExchangeUser and ExchangeDistributionList objects that allow getting and setting properties of an Exchange user or Exchange distribution list.