Building OE add-ins & Windows Mail plug-ins
without knowledge of Outlook Express API: C#, VB.NET

Add-in Express™
for Outlook® Express and Microsoft® .net

Outlook Express specific components

Add-in Express sets you free from the necessity of mastering the arcane nature of Office's ActiveX interfaces and Windows API by adding several components that implement properties, methods and events of corresponding objects and COM interfaces. These components are toolbars and menus, menu items and buttons, etc.

All Outlook Express components and classes are declared in the AddinExpres.OE namespace.

Outlook Express Object

Add-in Express Component

Technology-specific objects and interfaces

Add-in Module

  • IDTExtensibility2

Add-in Module

It is the main module of any add-in project that centralizes the add-in's logic and its command bars, toolbars, menus and ribbons, provides access to host application objects, and more.

Visual designer

Outlook Express add-in module

Components and classes

  • Outlook Express events

Event components

Some Outlook Express Application events are important for developers. In order to organize a pool of these events and correctly handle them, all these events are wrapped by a special component.

Outlook Express events

Visual components

Outlook Express menus and toolbars

  • Menu bars

Explorer and Inspector menu bar components

Add-in Express contains two menu components that can be used to add your custom menu items and sub-menus to the main Outlook Express menu and to the menu on the mail windows. You can enable and disable your menu items and sub-menus at run-time. The components add, store and manage all controls that have been added to the menu using the Controls collection. More about customizing Outlook Express menus.

Outlook Express menu components

  • Toolbars

Explorer and Inspector toolbar components

Add-in Express offers two Outlook Express toolbar components, for the Explorer and Inspector windows.

The former adds a new toolbar to the Outlook Express Explorer window, the latter customizes toolbars on the Inspector window. You can enable, disable, show and hide your toolbars at run-time. More about creating custom Outlook Express toolbar.

Outlook Express toolbar components
See Also