Andrew Whitechapel
Shiny things that caught my eye
Time to Jump Ship
I've been working in the Office Development space for over 10 years now, and I finally decided it's...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/30/2009
HLSL in Office
HLSL is the High Level Shading Language for DirectX, documented here. I was wondering the other day...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/22/2009
Excel Services Getting Started – Pt4 Web Service APIs
This continues my previous checklists here, here and here on getting started with Excel Services. In...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/20/2009
Excel Services Getting Started – Pt3 EWA
This continues my previous checklists here and here on getting started with Excel Services. In this...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/04/2009
Excel Services Getting Started – Pt2 UDFs
This continues my previous checklist on getting started with Excel Services. Here, I’ll append a...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/24/2009
Excel Services Setup and Getting Started
As part of an internal prototype I was working on recently, I had to set up a machine for Excel...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/21/2009
MEF in Office?
In my last post, I looked briefly at MEF, and I’m wondering how this model can be applied to Office...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/07/2009
MEF
The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library, still under development, that provides...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/31/2009
Carter-Lippert VSTO Book Updated
The eagerly-awaited update to Eric Carter and Eric Lippert’s VSTO book has been released this week....
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2009
Silverlight Web Part in SharePoint
Having looked at Silverlight in Office client, I thought I’d round out the exercise by looking at...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2009
Silverlight Deep Zoom and Office Add-ins
I had some ‘free’ time today waiting to give a demo at an MVP conference session – the session...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/07/2009
Exposing Events From Non-VSTO Add-in Automation Objects
I posted a while back about exposing an automation object from an add-in that fires events. That...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/01/2009
COM Shim 2.3.1.0 Bug Fixes
A customer (VSP) was using the COM Shim and identified a scenario where a bug in the shim code could...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/26/2009
Message Hooks in Add-ins
Just like my earlier post on message filters, this is an advanced scenario – so be warned: you...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/24/2009
Launching Office Apps Programmatically
There are at least 9 different ways to start or connect to an Office app programmatically in managed...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/30/2008
Passing Objects to Exposed Add-in Methods
I’ve posted a few times on the best way to expose methods from an add-in to automation clients – for...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/30/2008
Using Managed Controls as ActiveX Controls
Can you use a managed usercontrol in an Office document in the same way that you can use a native...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/25/2008
Implementing IMessageFilter in an Office add-in
First a warning: this is an advanced scenario, and you should not attempt to use this technique...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 11/19/2008
Advances in .NET Type System
Here at PDC, Misha Shneerson has just delivered a talk on a couple of very interesting new features...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/28/2008
Exposing Events from Managed Add-in Objects
Following on from my recent posts on exposing add-in objects, here and here, it occurred to me that...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/13/2008
Exciting PDC Session
Under the Hood: Advances in the .NET Type SystemThis is one session you absolutely must not miss. It...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/06/2008
AddInSpy - Diagnosing/Troubleshooting Office Add-ins
AddInSpy is a new diagnostic tool for reporting the maximum possible information about all Office...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 10/01/2008
Version-Specific UI in Add-ins
Continuing on from my earlier posts on building add-ins for multiple versions of Office, avoiding...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 09/02/2008
COM Shim Wizard 2.3.1.0
We’ve released a slight update to the COM Shim Wizard. This is available as a free download here,...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/27/2008
Activating a Custom Tab on the Ribbon When a Document Is Opened
Harry 'Play It Again Sam' Miller has posted a wonderfully funny video on this topic - with a serious...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/19/2008
COMAddIns Race Condition
You can expose an arbitrary object from your add-in as a kind of extension to the Office host...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/13/2008
Why your COMAddIn.Object should derive from StandardOleMarshalObject
In general, it is important that any code in a managed Office add-in should execute on the main UI...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 08/11/2008
Creating a PivotTable Programmatically
I received an email from a customer the other day asking how to set up an Excel pivot table...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/25/2008
Demand-Loading VSTO Add-ins
In an earlier post, I talked about how you could delay (or prevent) the loading of managed code...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 07/14/2008
Add-ins for Multiple Office Versions without PIAs (Pt2), or _VtblGap
In my last post, I discussed how you could avoid any dependency on the Office PIAs by using...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 06/24/2008
Add-ins for Multiple Office Versions without PIAs
In a previous post, I discussed how you could build an add-in for multiple versions of Office, and...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 06/03/2008
PDC 2008 Open for Registration
It’s been 3 years since the last Professional Developers Conference, so I’m pleased that we’re doing...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/28/2008
Ribbon and Task Pane in Access Add-ins
In an earlier post, I looked at how you could morph a VSTO project for one application into a...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/22/2008
The Case For Shared Add-ins
People have been building native shared add-ins for Office (and related apps) since their...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 05/09/2008
Delay-loading the CLR in Office Add-ins
Suppose you control your enterprise desktops to the extent that you control which add-ins are...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/19/2008
VSTO Loader and Runtime Components
Perusing the forums over the last few months, it’s clear that there’s some confusion about the...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 04/02/2008
Integrating Doc-level and Add-in Solutions
Everyone knows you can build document-level Office solutions and you can build application-level...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/20/2008
ActiveX Controls in VSTO Solutions
In the past, before it became strategically acceptable to build Office-based solutions in managed...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/13/2008
VSTO Power Tools
I announced the release of v1 of the VSTO/VSTA Power Tools last time, and they've been getting quite...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 03/05/2008
VSTO/VSTA Power Tools v1.0
As I announced at the Office Developers Conference in San Jose this week, we’re releasing a set of...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/21/2008
VSTO Add-ins for Access?
In my previous post, I looked at how the VSTO add-in model is flexible enough to be used in...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/19/2008
Add-ins for Office 14
Following on from my previous post, it should be clear that we've designed the VSTO Office add-in...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 02/01/2008
Jobs in Visual Studio Biz Apps
The Visual Studio team is growing and we have several exciting developer positions open! If you’re...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/31/2008
Back To The Future
Or, Prototyping VSTO Add-ins for Unsupported Office Versions/Applications It is in the nature of the...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/29/2008
Managed Automation Add-ins
I've been thinking more about calling unmanaged XLL UDFs from managed code than about managed...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/23/2008
Feed your geek
We're 26 days away from the 2008 Office Developer Conference. I've been roped in to talk about the...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/15/2008
Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt2)
In my previous post, I looked at how to build a VSTO add-in that invokes native XLL UDFs via the...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 01/01/2008
Invoking Native Excel UDFs From Managed Code (Pt1)
As part of a little ongoing investigation, I wanted to communicate between a managed add-in and a...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/13/2007
Building an Excel XLL in C/C++ with VS 2008
As part of a little investigation I'm doing at present, I needed to build some simple native XLLs...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/09/2007
PDC 2008
Hard on the heels of the Office DevCon, we've just announced the dates for the Microsoft...
Author: Garry Trinder Date: 12/07/2007