DEV390 Extending Word and Excel with Visual Studio Tools for Office Ken Getz Senior Consultant MCW Technologies, LLC

Me.About Senior Consultant with MCW Technologies, LLC Microsoft Regional Director, SoCal Technical editor for Access-VB-SQL Advisor ( Author of several developer’s books on ASP.NET, VB, Access, and VBA ASP.NET, VB.NET, ADO.NET, VB6 and Access video training for AppDev (

Agenda Review Visual Studio Tools for Office Calling a Web Service Word and SQL Server Creating an Excel Chart Working with Menus Using Office Controls Language Issues Simple Deployment Issues

Visual Studio Tools for Office Extends.NET development to Microsoft Office 2003 Facilitates smart client application development with Office 2003 and the.NET Framework

Visual Studio Tools for Office Developers using VS.NET 2003 can write code to run in reaction to Microsoft Word 2003 and Microsoft Excel 2003 events Use Visual Basic.NET or Visual C#.NET Code can run in Word and Excel Not a replacement for VBA Existing event code in VBA? Order of event handling with managed code non-deterministic

Call a Web Service Suppose you have a Web service that returns a DataSet Need to display data in Excel No simple solution for working with DataSet in Excel Can easily retrieve and display data using Visual Studio Tools Dem o

Set Up the Demo Create new Excel project Add Web Reference NorthwindData/Products.asmx Rename to NorthwindData Retrieve list of average sales Fill range with results Format range Notice Imports statement Dem o

Excel Objects ThisApplication, ThisWorkbook Excel.Range Offset CurrentRegion AutoFormat Font Columns Note use of enumerations Intellisense doesn’t do the job

How Does It Work? Developer creates assembly, sets document properties, perhaps deploys assembly to centralized location End user opens document Office uses document properties to locate and download assembly.NET security verifies assembly is OK to run

Code Loading Process User opens document Custom Props? Trusted doc? Trusted code? New / Open event fires No STOP No STOP Download assembly No Unload AppDomain Fail Hook up events Yes FailYes Create AppDomain Fail Load CLR Yes Fail

Word and SQL Server Create new Word project Add Web Reference Create Table Add data to cells within table Dem o

Word Objects ThisApplication, ThisDocument Word.Range InsertBefore, InsertParagraphAfter Font Word.Table Cell

Creating Excel Chart Chart object in Excel completely programmable Can embed on existing sheet, or can create separate Chart sheet Worksheet and Chart both inherit from Sheet base class Cast Sheet object as correct type as needed Example creates chart on new sheet

Creating a Chart Create new chart (on its own sheet) Use Excel macro recorder to create code Sometimes it’s just easier! Requires cleanup and modification Add code to reset workbook So you can run the demo more than once Dem o

Working with Menus Office CommandBar object model required Somewhat obtuse Collection of menu controls of various types Must know name of top-level menu Use tools within application to find this Wouldn’t it be better to run sample code from menu, rather than on open?

Creating Menus Retrieve reference to top-level menu Call Controls.Add method to add new CommandBarControl Cast as CommandBarPopup Call Controls.Add method to add CommandBarButton Must remove the menu when workbook closes Hook up Click event somehow Dem o

Using Office Controls Add COM reference to MS Forms 2.0 Watch out for multiple instances in registry Select first reference Import Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.Forms or MSForms Depending on which instance you select Call FindControl method (provided by template) to retrieve reference Hook up event handler Dem o

Dialect Dyslexia Normally, language doesn’t matter Visual Basic.NET is easier in this context C# developers at a slight disadvantage Problem areas: Parameterized properties Optional parameters Passing parameters (Word likes ref) Variant members Late binding

Parameterized Properties If a property accepts a parameter And the parameter isn’t an indexer C# can’t handle it PIAs provide accessor methods, instead: Offset becomes get_Offset Range becomes get_Range Value property in Excel accepts parameter C# developers can use Value2 property

Parameterized Properties ' Visual Basic rng.Offset(0, col).Value = _ dt.Columns(col).ColumnName // C# rng.get_Offset(0, col).Value2 = dt.Columns[col].ColumnName;

Optional Parameters VBA (and VB.NET) support optional parameters Must be at the end of the parameter list C# does not, so must include all parameters Can pass Type.Missing to indicate missing value Some methods have a large number of optional parameters (up to 30 or more!)

Optional Parameters ' Visual Basic rng.AutoFormat( _ Excel.XlRangeAutoFormat. _ xlRangeAutoFormatColor2) // C# rng.AutoFormat( _ Excel.XlRangeAutoFormat. _ xlRangeAutoFormatColor2, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing);

Passing Parameters Most of Word’s methods require parameters passed by reference VBA and VB.NET make this transparent C# requires the ref keyword No literal values!

Passing Parameters ' Visual Basic ThisDocument.Range.Delete() // C# Object start = Type.Missing; Object end = Type.Missing; Object unit = Type.Missing; Object count = Type.Missing; ThisDocument.Range(ref start, ref end). Delete(ref unit, ref count);

Variant Members Some (not many) Word and Excel properties return/accept Variant values C# can’t handle Variants Look for accessor methods, or replacement properties

Variant Members ' Visual Basic tbl.Style = "Table Grid 8" // C# Object style = "Table Grid 8"; tbl.set_Style(ref style);

Late Binding Word dialogs use late binding (“expando interfaces”) to determine members at runtime C# can’t support late binding Workarounds include using Reflection to determine available members, or using the Visual Basic.NET CallByName method No example in this demo Doesn’t come up often

Deployment Issues Generally a simple process Need to be aware of security issues Policies control behavior See separate discussion of deployment and security What about simply handing a document and its assembly to another developer? Even that requires some knowledge

Debugging and Paths Need to ensure that path to Excel or Word has been set correctly Watch for path locations Check Project Properties|Configuration Properties|Debugging Fix path to host application

Finding the Documents Properties window for project Assembly Link Location Office Document

Class Names Can Kill What if you change the default namespace for your project? Or the default class name? Your code won’t run See DescriptionAttribute in class <Assembly: DescriptionAttribute( _ "OfficeStartupClass, Version=1.0, " & _ "Class=ExcelProject1.OfficeCodeBehind")>

Loading the Assembly Creating the project adds two document properties to the Office doc _AssemblyLocation0 _AssemblyName0 These must match reality

And That’s Still Not Enough It’s managed code Won’t run unless you grant permissions Visual Studio.NET sets up permissions for project in its original folder What if you move the project? Or hand the project to another developer? What if you want to run this session’s samples?

Create a Policy Add a code access group Create a new policy? Easiest, for development purposes, to allow all code within a folder to run Specify c:\path\* as the location Specify “FullTrust” This isn’t a good idea on users’ machines Works fine for development

But Wait, There’s More! Just barely scratched the surface Word/Excel object models are huge Provide a ton of useful functionality Language issues? C# users will want to create “wrapper” classes What about no-touch deployment? Granting permissions for download code? Requires an entire separate session

Next Steps Get Visual Studio Tools for Office msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/office Install Visual Studio.NET 2003 and then full installation of Office 2003 Try out some of the walkthroughs/demos Take existing Office automation code and try recreating in managed code

Community Resources White papers: Visual Studio Tools for Office: url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ VSTOIntro.asp?frame=true url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ VSTOIntro.asp?frame=true Introduction to the Word Object Model: url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ WordObject.asp?frame=true url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ WordObject.asp?frame=true Introduction to the Excel Object Model: url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ ExcelObj.asp?frame=true url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/ ExcelObj.asp?frame=true

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