Building custom task panes for Word 2013 – 2003

Task panes provide a great way to deliver a custom user interface inside Microsoft Word if the standard ribbon bar simply does not suffice. It gives you the opportunity to display a fairly large amount of information to the user as well as giving the user the option to hide or show it at their choosing.

When building a Word add-in using Add-in Express, you have a choice of either creating a standard Office task pane or using the Add-in Express advanced Office task panes. In this article, we’ll take a look at both approaches.

• Creating a Word COM add-in project
• Building a standard Word task pane
• Creating an advanced Word task pane

Creating a Word COM add-in project

Start by creating a new ADX COM Add-in project in Visual Studio. You’ll find the project template under Other Project Types > Extensibility

The project template will initiate the New Microsoft Office COM Add-in wizard. When prompted, select your programming language of choice (C#, VB.NET or C++.NET), the minimum supported version of Office (2000 – 2013) you would like the add-in to support as well as in which Office applications you want it to work.

Since we’ll be focusing on Microsoft Word for this article, we’ll only select Word from the list of supported applications.

Building a standard Word task pane

The standard Word Task pane looks and operates exactly like the normal Word task panes. You can drag and drop it to one of four (top, bottom, left, right) locations within the Word main window and it cannot be minimized, only closed. The standard custom task panes support Word 2007, 2010 and 2013.

To create your own custom task pane, first add a new User Control to your project, by selecting Add User Control… from the Visual Studio Project menu.

You can then design the user interface for the task pane as you would any standard windows form. In this scenario, we’re building a simple word counter.

Next, switch to the AddinModule designer surface and click on the ellipses (…) button next to its TaskPanes property in the Visual Studio properties window.

You will be presented with the TaskPane Collection Editor. Click on the Add button to add a new item to the collection and set the following properties:

• ControlProgID : WordTaskPanes.ctlTaskPane (The name of the User control we’ve added earlier)
• DockPosition : ctpDockPositionRight
• DockPositionRestrict : ctpDockPositionRestrictNone
• SupportedApps : Word
• Title : Word Counter

Build, register and run your Word addin project. You should see the custom task pane docked to the right of the Word application window.

Creating an advanced Word task pane

Add-in Express’ advanced Word task panes give you the functionality of the standard task panes, but with the added options of (a) minimizing the task pane, as well as (b) to host more than one task pane per dock location. Advanced task panes support all versions of Microsoft Word, from 2000 through Word 2013.

Before we can create an advance task pane, we need to add an ADXWordTaskPanesManager component to the AddinModule designer surface.

Next, add a new ADX Word Task Pane to the project. You can find the item template under Add-in Express Items > Word

You can design the advanced Word Task pane similarly to what was done with the standard user control. When you’re satisfied with the design, switch back to the AddinModule designer surface and select the ADXWordTaskPanesManager component we’ve added earlier.

On the built-in Visual designer toolbar, click the Add button. This will add a new item to the Task Panes Manager’s Items collection.

Select the item in the visual designer and change the following properties:

• AllowedDropPositions : Bottom;Left;Right;Top
• AlwaysShowHeader : True
• IsDragDropAllowed : True
• Position : Left
• TaskPaneClassName : WordTaskPanes.ADXWordTaskPane (The name of the Advanced task pane we’ve added earlier)

Before we run the add-in to see our advanced task pane in action, add another ADX Word Task Pane item to the project and select the ADX Word Task Panes manager on the AddinModule designer surface.

Add another item to its Items collection and this time set its TaskPaneClassName property the newly added Task Pane’s name and also set its Position property to Left.

This will:

a) Cause both the advance task panes to be docked to the left of the Word application window.

b) Automatically show two arrow icons, with which the user can switch between different task panes.

c) Show a drop-down menu listing of all the available task panes.

Advanced task pane and standard Office task pane co-existence

In case you were wondering. Yes, you can have both a standard Office task pane and an Add-in Express advance task pane in the same Word add-in and they will both co-exist in prefect harmony. In the following example, I have the standard task pane docked to the right and the advance task pane docked to the left of the Word 2013 application window:

Thank you for reading. Until next time, keep coding!

Word add-in development in Visual Studio for beginners:

• Part 1: Word add-in development – Application and base objects
• Part 2: Customizing Word UI – What is and isn’t customizable
• Part 3: Customizing Word main menu, context menus and Backstage view
• Part 4: Creating custom Word ribbons and toolbars
• Part 6: Working with Word document content objects
• Part 7: Working with Word document designs, styles and printing
• Part 8: Working with multiple Microsoft Word documents
• Part 9: Using custom XML parts in Word add-ins
• Part 10: Working with Word document properties, bookmarks, content controls and quick parts
• Part 11: Populating Word documents with data from external sources
• Part 12: Working with Microsoft Word templates