‘Add-in Express for Office and .net’ category archive
How To: Use Find and FindNext to retrieve Outlook Contact items
Eugene Astafiev | October 19th, 2011
Not so long ago I described how to use the Find and FindNext methods to retrieve Outlook mail items from a folder. Today I am going to replace a mail item declaration with a contact declaration. There is no difference between mail and contact items in case we use the Find and FindNext methods... Read the rest of this entry →
How to add PivotTables and Slicers to MS Excel programmatically
Pieter van der Westhuizen | October 17th, 2011
As I've mentioned in my previous article Excel enables us to provide our users with interactive and powerful ways to visualize their data. Pivot tables add another dimension to this by summarizing thousands of records of data in one page and let you analyse trends in your data without the need for formulas... Read the rest of this entry →
How To: Send a Contact item in Outlook programmatically
Eugene Astafiev | October 14th, 2011
There are three ways of sending a contact in Outlook. Today we will examine them in detail. Please note that the ContactItem class doesn't provide the Send method like the MailItem class does... Read the rest of this entry →
Invoking a COM add-in from an Excel XLL add-in: advanced sample
Andrei Smolin | October 11th, 2011
Really often, when I saw an error returned by an Excel formula, I thought about the poor possibilities that this error-reporting approach – a remnant of bygone concepts – provides for developers. The very first time I thought about showing a custom task pane from a UDF was when Add-in Express allowed showing custom panes in Excel; it was back in 2007... Read the rest of this entry →
How To: Create a new Outlook Contact item programmatically
Eugene Astafiev | October 7th, 2011
Not so long ago I described various ways of creating Outlook messages programmatically. Today we will examine contact items. The first and easiest way of creating a new Contact item in Outlook is to use the CreateItem method of the Application class... Read the rest of this entry →
Thread-safe XLL. How to get the caller address
Andrei Smolin | October 7th, 2011
The implementation of ADXExcelRef.ConvertToA1Style (ConvertToR1C1Style) uses xlfRefText which is NOT thread-safe as per Financial Applications Using Excel Add-in Development in C/C++ (2nd edition). On the other hand, xlSheetNm returning the sheet name is thread-safe. It means that the thread-safe way to get the caller address is to write some code... Read the rest of this entry →
How To: Perform Send/Receive in Outlook programmatically
Eugene Astafiev | October 5th, 2011
Today I will continue my series of "How To" articles explaining the basics of Outlook development. The NameSpace class in Outlook provides a programmatic equivalent of the "Send/Receive All" command – SendAndReceive method
... Read the rest of this entry →
How to use Evaluate to invoke an Excel UDF programmatically
Andrei Smolin | October 3rd, 2011
Whether your UDF is a VBA macro or an Excel Automation add-in or even an XLL add-in, you can invoke any method it provides to the user. To do this, you need to get or create an Excel.Application object and invoke ExcelApp.Evaluate() supplying it with the correct syntax for your method and its parameters.... Read the rest of this entry →
Outlook NewMail event unleashed: the challenge (NewMail, NewMailEx, ItemAdd)
Pieter van der Westhuizen | October 3rd, 2011
A while ago Eugene asked me whether I would be interested at taking an in-depth look at how to effectively handle a new mail in Microsoft Outlook. I mean how hard could it be? We have the NewMail and NewMailEx events and if all else fails we can use the Folder Item Add event, right... Read the rest of this entry →
Creating a fast Excel add-in (C#, VB.NET). Reading and updating cells.
Andrei Smolin | September 29th, 2011
This is a known problem: doing things cell by cell in Excel is a slow operation. The Excel object model provides two ways to speed up the code... Read the rest of this entry →
HowTo: Replace the standard Outlook Task UI
Pieter van der Westhuizen | September 28th, 2011
Add-in Express for Office and .net version 6.4, introduced us to the CompleteReplacement Outlook form region in March this year. With this region you are able to completely replace the entire area of an Outlook Inspector... Read the rest of this entry →
How To: Get unread Outlook e-mail items from the Inbox folder
Eugene Astafiev | September 27th, 2011
In my previous articles we discussed the Find, FindNext and Restrict methods of the Outlook Items class. You can use these methods for retrieving unread items in the way I did... Read the rest of this entry →
Fast Excel add-in. Checking incoming data in XLL
Andrei Smolin | September 23rd, 2011
When in an Excel UDF you need to check incoming data and replace incorrect values, you can use the modified-in-place argument, the XLL feature supported by Add-in Express 2010 for Office and .net.
... Read the rest of this entry →
How To: Use Restrict method to retrieve Outlook mail items from a folder
Eugene Astafiev | September 23rd, 2011
In my previous article I demonstrated how you can use the Find and FindNext methods of the Items class in Outlook. Today I want to show you an alternative way of retrieving Outlook mail items from a folder. As the post's title suggests, the Restrict method plays the key role in the process... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Implementing a custom UI for Office add-ins with ClickOnce
Ty Anderson | September 22nd, 2011
Sometimes I get on a roll. Currently that roll is "customizing deployment packages". Yesterday, I subjected you to a video that shows you how to customize a ClickTwice deployment to include a EULA (among other things). Today, I have some ClickOnce goodness for you... Read the rest of this entry →
Video: Customizing a ClickTwice deployment package of your Office add-in
Ty Anderson | September 21st, 2011
When you build an Office add-in, your users' first impression will be based on the installation experience. I know…it isn't fair…but it's true. This fact means they will judge your app before they have encountered it. So you need to provide a quality installation experience
... Read the rest of this entry →