Office Newswire: Are Office 2013 licensing terms draconian?

Microsoft tells customers to start renting Office via Office 365 or purchase a severely limited perpetual license. The press hates this decision, calls it draconian, and tells us everyone will switch to Google Docs... Read the rest of this entry →

Beta 1 of VDProj to WiX Converter is out!

If you have read through our recent blog posts, you probably noticed a few ones focusing on WiX. And that was not an accidental choice of topic, we were trying to see how the land lies in that direction :) Well, now I am ready to unveil the secret and announce the upcoming release of a new product - VDProj to WiX Converter... Read the rest of this entry →

Converting a .vdproj to WiX in Visual Studio 2012, 2010, 2008

I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that, from Visual Studio 2012, that Visual Studio Setup projects (.vdproj) is a thing of the past. This news has been met with shock, horror and disappointment, but luckily all is not lost. As I've mentioned in a previous article, Microsoft is touting WiX (Windows Installer XML) as the heir apparent to the traditional VS Setup projects and all things considered it is a very good and free alternative ... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: How to convert a .vdproj to .wixproj in a click

You might already know or you might not… Visual Studio 2012 does not support setup projects. If this statement feels like a punch in the nose and you asking yourself, "does this mean what I think it means?"…the answer is "yes!" ... Read the rest of this entry →

Office Newswire: Microsoft, burn the boats already!

Microsoft find themselves in an entirely new and foreign landscape. The successes of their past will not help them here. The demands are new. The language is different. People here do not work as they do in the old country of their past. Microsoft must find it within themselves to match wits with their enemies and succeed... Read the rest of this entry →

Excel 2013 Timeline: creating data visualizations with VB.NET, C#

Now that Microsoft Office 2013 is available, it's time to start digging through the "What's New for Office Developers" topics. I'm not sure where these topics will take us because, with each release of Office, Microsoft touts the various new features and objects available to developers... Read the rest of this entry →

Office Newswire :: Microsoft Releases Office 2013

Three days ago, Microsoft surprised us all by releasing Office 2013. I wasn't expecting it to happen until March. Maybe Office for iOS will arrive in March instead. Who knows?! That's why this is fun to watch... Read the rest of this entry →

How to preserve the ribbon control state (or, if you develop custom Outlook ribbons…)

If you decide to build an Outlook add-in, you're going to want to customize the user interface. If you start customizing the Outlook user interface, you'll probably build a custom ribbon. If you build a custom Outlook ribbon, you'll want to put some controls on it like a button that toggles, a checkbox, and a drop down control ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to dynamically bind Outlook add-in UI elements to the context

Something that I've noticed is that if you want to really start bending Microsoft Outlook to your programming will, you need to start embracing and combining the use of message classes and content types when developing Outlook add-ins... Read the rest of this entry →

Office Newswire: Microsoft Office 2013 will not be free

It's eerie, the quiet. Office 2013 went RTM something like three years ago. It feels that way to me at least. Not much new is going on (publicly at least) except for the blog posts from the various Office teams. It's all quiet here on the Western front... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating custom Outlook forms in C#, VB.NET: Outlook 2013 and 2010 form examples

Part of the allure of customizing or even adding your entire application inside Outlook is the ability to add your own .Net forms inside the Outlook Explorer and Inspector windows. In this article I'll show you how easy it is to create your own custom Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010 forms using Add-in Express for Office and .net... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating a shared ribbon for Office 2013: Word, Excel and PowerPoint

In this article, I want to show you how can create single Microsoft Office 2013 and 2010 ribbon and share it with Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. This scenario is one of many where Add-in Express shines. Using the Add-in Express framework, you can easily build a shared ribbon in a matter of minutes. Best of all, you can also quickly configure your controls to display (or not to display) in the Office host applications your add-in targets... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing Outlook 2010 and 2013 Ribbon tabs, buttons, groups: C#, VB.NET

The Ribbon revolutionized the Office user interface when originally introduced in Office 2007. Using Visual Studio's out-of-the-box tools, you can build custom Ribbon's for your solutions. BUT… Microsoft provides visual designers for a small subset of ribbon controls. Meaning, you will need to write lots of XML to complete your customization ... Read the rest of this entry →

Office Newswire: A new year. A new Microsoft?

A new year, a new Microsoft roadmap. Here is some palace intrigue. The editorial is based on an old/stale PowerPoint slide but that doesn’t prevent it from being interesting. If it can be trusted, looks like the Office 16 is planned for 2015... ... Read the rest of this entry →

Add-in Express for Office and Delphi VCL adds support for Delphi XE3

Some of you probably noticed that we added support for Delphi XE3 in Security Manager for Microsoft Outlook as early as in November and you were probably asking yourself why we didn't support XE3 in our main Delphi component - Add-in Express for Office and Delphi VCL... Read the rest of this entry →

Developing a Word Task Pane App

Today's sample will integrate with the Microsoft Translator API. The app will allow you to select text within Word, translate the text, and view the translation results. This type of task pane is not the same animal we know and love as Office developers. This type of is the kind a web developer-type would love... Read the rest of this entry →

Have any questions? Ask us right now!