New functions in Visual Studio Tools for office

There are two versions of Visual Studio Tools for office:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tools for the Microsoft Office System (vsto 2005)

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (vsto 2005 SE)

These two versions provide many new features that help you create managed solutions that use Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Microsoft Office System.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (vsto 2005 SE) is the second version of vsto 2005. For more information about how to download and install vsto 2005 se, see how to install Visual Studio Tools for office.

New features in vsto 2005 se

Vsto 2005 se includes the following new features:

• ApplicationProgramLevel External program.

• Custom task pane.

• Extensibility of the functional area.

• Outlook form area.

Application-level external programs

• Vsto 2005 se contains project templates for multiple applications in Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Microsoft Office System. For a complete list of applications, see the available features of the product portfolio.

• The new external program project template is located in the Visual Basic Project and Visual C # project folder, in the sub-folders named "office", they are named "2003 external programs" and "2007 external programs.

• These external program project templates contain a different programming model from the Outlook 2005 external program created using vsto 2003. For more information, see application-level external program programming.

Custom task pane

• You can use an external application to create a custom task pane for some applications in Microsoft Office System 2007. For more information, see the custom task pane overview.

Functional Area scalability

• You can use an external program to customize the functional area User Interface (UI) for some applications in Microsoft Office System 2007 ). For more information, see functional area scalability overview.

Outlook form Area

• You can use an external program to create a custom form area for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. For more information, see the outlook form Area Overview.

Integration of infopath Design Patterns in Visual Studio

• The Microsoft Office infopath 2007 form template design environment has been fully integrated into the Visual Studio development environment. You can compileCodeAt the same time, use the infopath 2007 feature to design the appearance of the infopath form template to expand its functionality. When you use an infopath form template in Visual Studio (Microsoft. Office. InterOP. infopath. semitrustNamespace member) or the new infopath 2007 managed code Object Model (Microsoft. Office. infopathNamespace members) Use Visual C # Or Visual Basic to write business logic. For more information, see welcome to the infopath developer hosting code form template reference ".

New features in vsto 2005

Vsto 2005 includes the following new features:

• Project system.

• Visualization designer.

• Control.

• Supports outlook external programs.

• Operation pane support.

• Smart Tag support.

• Server programming.

• Data cache.

• Deployment.

For a white paper that provides tutorials on features, see what's new in Visual Studio 2005 tools for Office (New in Visual Studio 2005 tools for Office) (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink? Linkid = 50565 ).

Project System

• The project template is located in the sub-folder named "office" under the Visual Basic Project and Visual C # project folder.

• You have added a new project template for Microsoft Office Excel 2003. For more information, see "Excel template" Project template.

• You have added a new project template for the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 project. For more information, see outlook external program project templates.

• Excel no longer has only one code file for the workbook. Each worksheet has a separate code file, and the workbook also has a code file. Microsoft Office Word 2003 has a code file for a document or template. For more information, see project files hidden in Solution Explorer.

Visual designer

• Excel and Word files are opened in Visual Studio as visual design pictures. You can design the document and write the code after the document in the same environment. For more information, see the Office document overview in the Visual Studio environment.

Controls

• You can drag a regular Visual Studio control from the toolbox to a document. For more information, see Windows Forms controls in the office documentation.

• You can use new controls called "host controls" that extend some built-in office objects. Now, these objects expose events and have the data binding function. For more information, see host items and Host Control overview.

Outlook external program Support

• You can use a project template to create an external Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 program. For more information, see application-level external program programming.

Operation pane support

• The support now allows you to easily add the operation pane to the document. For more information, see the operations pane overview.

Smart Tag support

• The support now allows you to easily add smart tags to documents. For more information, see intelligent tag overview.

Data Programming

• You can program data in office documents without using the office application's object model. For more information, see Data Model overview.

Server programming

• You can access and operate data in the office documents on the server without starting the Office application. For more information, see overview of server-side access to document data.

Data Cache

• Data can be stored in the XML Data Islands attached to office documents, so data can be used offline or on servers. For more information, see Data Model overview and how to: cache data for offline use or on servers.

Deployment

• Now the application and deployment list are deployed to make it easier to update the solution. For more information, see deployment document-level customization.