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49<br />

Visual studio Tools<br />

for office<br />

WhaT ’ s in This ChaPTer<br />

➤<br />

➤<br />

➤<br />

What types of projects you can create with VSTO <strong>and</strong> what capabilities you<br />

can include in these projects<br />

Fundamental techniques that apply to all types of VSTO solutions<br />

Using host items <strong>and</strong> host controls<br />

Visual Studio Tools for Offi ce (VSTO) is a technology that enables you to customize <strong>and</strong> extend<br />

Microsoft Offi ce applications <strong>and</strong> documents by using the .<strong>NET</strong> Framework. It also includes tools<br />

that you can use to make this customization easier in Visual Studio — for example, a visual designer<br />

for Offi ce Ribbon controls.<br />

VSTO is the latest in a long line of products that Microsoft has released to allow the customization of<br />

Office applications. The object model that you use to access Office applications has evolved over time.<br />

If you have used it in the past, then parts of it will be familiar to you. If you have programmed VBA<br />

add - ins for Office applications, then you will be well prepared for the techniques discussed in this<br />

chapter. However, the classes that VSTO makes available so that you can interact with Offi ce have been<br />

extended beyond the Office object model. For example, the VSTO classes include .<strong>NET</strong> data binding<br />

functionality.<br />

Up until Visual Studio 2008, VSTO was a separate download that you could obtain if you wanted to<br />

develop Offi ce solutions. Starting from Visual Studio 2008, VSTO was integrated with the VS IDE.<br />

The previous version of VSTO, which was also known as VSTO 3, included full support for Offi ce<br />

2007 <strong>and</strong> many new features. This included the ability to interact with Word content controls, the<br />

visual ribbon designer mentioned previously, <strong>and</strong> more.<br />

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