This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007: VSTO for Excel, Word, and Outlook is the definitive book on VSTO 2008 programming, written by the inventors of the technology. VSTO is a set of tools that allow professional developers to use the full power of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework to program against Microsoft Office 2007.

This book delivers in one place all the information you need to succeed using VSTO to program against Word 2007, Excel 2007, and Outlook 2007, and provides the necessary background to customize Visio 2007, Publisher 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and InfoPath 2007. It introduces the Office 2007 object models, covers the most commonly used objects in those object models, and will help you avoid the pitfalls caused by the COM origins of the Office object models. Developers who wish to program against Office 2003 should consult Carter and Lippert’s previous book, Visual Studio Tools for Office.

In VSTO 2008, you can build add-ins for all the major Office 2007 applications, build application-level custom task panes, customize the new Office Ribbon, modify Outlook’s user interface using Forms Regions, and easily deploy everything you build using ClickOnce.

Carter and Lippert cover their subject matter with deft insight into the needs of .NET developers learning VSTO, based on the deep knowledge that comes from the authors’ unique perspective of living and breathing VSTO for the past three years. This book

• Explains the architecture of Microsoft Office programming and introduces the object models

• Covers the main ways Office applications are customized and extended

• Explores the ways of customizing Excel, Word, and Outlook, and plumbs the depths of programming with their events and object models

• Introduces the VSTO programming model

• Teaches how to use Windows Forms and WPF in VSTO and how to work with the Document Actions Pane and application-level task panes

• Delves into VSTO data programming and server data scenarios

• Teaches ClickOnce VSTO deployment

This is the one book you need to succeed in programming against Office 2007.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Not for novice VSTO users - 2009-08-19
Reviewer Rating:
I am new to VSTO and was hoping to find a resource with examples and best practices for extending Word documents and templates using this technology. I was also hoping to find a clear, concise explanation of how to deploy a Word template that is extended with VSTO across an enterprise. Although I've done some work with VBA in the past, I am not a seasoned VB developer. I'm much more comfortable writing in C# than VB. This book seems to be targeting an audience that is proficient in VB and intimately familiar with the .Net Framework, consequently it fell short in meeting my needs.

Best VSTO book there is so far... AND its C#... - 2009-11-13
Reviewer Rating:
I know quite a lot about Excel VBA and decided to get mt feet wet in the VSTO side of things. This looked like quite a sensible thing to do imo since , although VBA is not going to be dropped by MS, it's not going to be developed as much (if any) in the future.

I have to say, I think the transition is much harder than i expected. Why? Well looking at the examples I've found on the web / other VSTO books everything is either ambiguous or hard to see the woods for the trees. This is something I believe that this book rectifies.

It's simply the best VSTO book I've seen, and its with C# - double bonus for me! Most books in this area are VB. Some of these other books I've looked at were with utter disbelief! This book is sitting in the top drawer and has about 95% of what you'll need.
It doesn't cover the Excel VBA model in great detail. I beleieve this to actually be a good thing. Covering this would 1. double the size of the book. 2. Take the focus away from what its trying to achieve - actually using VSTO. (BTW, the actual model content that is included is, what I believe, the correct content to get you started to a decent developers level. You're not going to be able to code hardcore spreadsheets, but its a step in the right direction.)

It covers more than Excel (word and outlook are included), so i really skipped those sections more or less. Something that's easily done with this book due to its layout.

The only bad thing I would say about this book is that it points out how remarkably good VSTO actually is!! The 'hard' parts of Excel VBA development (I'm talking smart tags, ribbon modifications and the likes) are made rediculously easy. After being exposed to the power of office development with .NET, going back to a VBA environment would bring tears to a glass eye! :)

One of the best software books I've read - 2009-10-17
Reviewer Rating:
This is one of the best software books I've read. Very clear and complete, without useless fluff. Excellent description of Office software automation in general, and the use of VSTO to accomplish that automation. They give specific suggestions for the best way to accomplish tasks, as well as explaining why that's their preferred approach. An added bonus is that it's well written and enjoyable reading.

Great and complete introduction - 2009-07-31
Reviewer Rating:
Hello,

I read that book as an introduction to Outlook programming. This book uses C# and Visual Studio 2008 for all the examples. I loved the book, nothing is left to interpretation, everything is clear from the start to the end. Perfect book to start with.
I was interested in Outlook add-in only, and there are a couple chapters dedicated on that and form region. Other chapters applies to any office add-in.
I bought another book (Programming application office outlook 2007 from Byrne and Gregg), so I can digg deeper into Outlook objects model, but Carter & Lippert's book covered a lot, I won't need the other book as much as a tought I would at first.

I would recommend this book to anyone starting with Office Programming.

More focus and more advanced topics needed - 2009-07-21
Reviewer Rating:
I was disappointed in this book for four reasons:

1. Its lack of attention to important advanced topics such as Web services integration. In this day and age of integration, how can you not cover it?

2. The section on RibbonUI coding was disappointing. The authors refer to the awkward XML Fluent programming approach that non-VSTO developers have to take, but then they don't give you a compelling writeup on how you can ditch the non-VSTO approach.

3. More focus is needed. I need to work with Excel, not Word or Outlook so I found myself wading through pages I didn't need. This book would be better served broken out into separate books on each of the Office products.

4. Dense examples with too few figures: why are step-by-step instructions embedded into dense hard to read paragraphs. Why not break them out into bullets? And the examples need more figures to illustrate them.

On the positive side the book is well-researched and contains some useful nuggets of information. I don't know if there is a better alternative book out there at this time. In summary, I did not get nearly enough useful information out of this book and I would only recommend it if you are completely new to VSTO and VBA programming.

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