Posts Tagged ‘COM add-ins’

How To: Create a new Outlook Contact item programmatically

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 →

How To: Perform Send/Receive in Outlook programmatically

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

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)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 →

How to add sparklines and charts to MS Excel programmatically

The charting engine for Excel took a leap forward with the release of Office 2007. However, the engine was slower than Excel 2003's version and also introduced a few bugs. Luckily Excel 2010 fixed those bugs and is back to being fast. Sparklines, a word-sized chart has also been introduced in Excel 2010... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Use Find and FindNext methods to retrieve Outlook mail items from a folder (C#, VB.NET)

As you have probably guessed, this article will describe the Find and FindNext methods of the Outlook Items class. But before focusing on the functionality of these methods, I would like to draw an analogy with database programming in the .NET world. In ADO.NET there is the System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader class which provides the Read method... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Change an Outlook e-mail message before sending using C# or VB.NET

As a developer you may want to modify an e-mail before sending it (or just add some information, such as a non-disclosure agreement etc.). It is a fairly simple task that every Outlook developer should be familiar with. For example, sometimes you may need to change the subject of a message by adding an ID or something else to track the item in your Inbox; add something to the e-mail body... Read the rest of this entry →

Video: Create advanced form regions for Outlook 2013, 2010, 2007 (C#, VB.NET)

A few weeks ago I did a short video to introduce our new product known as Add-in Express Regions for Microsoft Outlook and VSTO. I thought it time to take things up a notch and provide a solid sample that implements advanced form regions in a VSTO project and also accesses the Outlook object model in a meaningful way... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Fill TO,CC and BCC fields in Outlook programmatically

In my previous article, where I showed how to create and send an Outlook message programmatically, I added a recipient to the e-mail. Now I want to delve deeper and show you what you can do with the Recipients collection. Outlook developers frequently need to add recipients to the TO, CC and BCC fields... Read the rest of this entry →

Have any questions? Ask us right now!