Video: Create Office add-ins with a single code base
Microsoft has a lot of new stuff for Office developers thanks to things like Office 2013, the Office app store, and Visual Studio 2012. But Microsoft is not the only one updating their tools and offerings. Today, we have a short preview along with a quick demo of the next generation of Add-in Express for Office and .net. This new version adds support for Microsoft Office 2013 and fits perfectly with VS 2012 by providing a true rapid application development experience, like all previous Add-in Express versions. So now developers have a powerful framework to quickly create world-class extensions for all Microsoft Office versions and applications, from prototype to final release, all with a single code base!
Maybe the best way to understand it better is to go through a quick demo of our key features. In this demo, we will create a COM add-in for Outlook, Excel, Word and PowerPoint… probably the four most popular Office applications targeted by extensions. The add-in will employ a custom “toolbar” (Ribbon or traditional Office toolbar) button to open an advanced task pane or advanced Outlook region depending on which app is the host app. The displayed advanced task pane or advance ribbon also contains a button that, when clicked, will display the active selection (i.e. a selected cell in Excel, selected text in Word and PowerPoint and the subject of a selected email in Outlook) within a message box.
The demo code will work in all versions of the four mentioned Office applications, from 2000 to 2013. As you will see, our framework simplifies Office extension development and lets you focus on writing your business logic.