Mart Muller's Weblog

Next week (September 25th) there is another DIWUG event scheduled. Please check our web site and register for a cool evening session about Office Business Applications (OBA) and SharePoint!

This session will be hosted at Enigmatry in Rotterdam

I just got an invitation from my colleague Wouter, giving me a link to download Xobni, a very useful Outlook add in for managing emails, contacts, etc.

"After a quick install, you'll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook - and suddenly information will become much easier to find. When a new email arrives, the sender's full communication history appears in the Xobni sidebar, including past conversations, attachments and contact details. Xobni also includes a blazing fast email search tool."

You can download the add in for free.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta (also known as “Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Beta” or “VSTO 2005 SE Beta”) is an add-on to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that enables you to build application-level add-ins for the 2007 Microsoft Office system as well as the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions.

VSTO 2005 SE Beta features several new important investments in the area of Office programmability. Whether it’s in the revolutionized and highly extensible Office user interface, or in the support for managed add-ins in Office applications not previously covered by Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, there exist a number of great new opportunities and challenges for Microsoft Office solution developers. VSTO 2005 SE Beta leverages the solution development environment of Visual Studio 2005 to help you use these opportunities and challenges to take your solutions to the next level.

VSTO 2005 SE Beta also includes support for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms, previously available as a separate download for Visual Studio 2005. You can design InfoPath 2007 form solutions right in the Visual Studio 2005 environment.

Feature highlights:

• Application-level add-in projects for six applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007.
• Support for the new Ribbon user interface extensibility model.
• Support for the new application-level customizable task pane.
• Support for managed code behind InfoPath 2007 forms, which enables the InfoPath 2007 design environment to appear inside Visual Studio 2005 for an integrated experience across your Visual Studio projects. You can use it to design forms with or without managed code.
• Support for Outlook custom form regions.
• Application-level add-in projects for five Microsoft Office 2003 applications: Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Visio 2003, and Microsoft Office Word 2003.

Download here

Want to sit back and relax while learning Office 2007 things?

• Creating and Customizing Site Pages with SharePoint Designer 2007 - Understand the difference between page templates and page instances and then learn how to customize your pages.
• Creating and Testing Features with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Step through the process of using Visual Studio to create a custom feature and an associated assembly DLL.
• Creating and Using Event Handlers in Windows SharePoint Services V3 - Create a list item receiver class to handle both synchronous events as well as asynchronous events.
• Creating Custom Workflows with the SharePoint Designer 2007 - Build a custom workflow using the wizard provided by SharePoint Designer 2007.
• Customizing the Ribbon with Visual Studio Tools for Office "v3" June CTP - Create an add-in for PowerPoint 2007 to customize and modify the ribbon.
• Extending the Office 2007 User Interface with a Custom Task Pane - Create a shared add-in with Visual Studio 2005 that extends the new user interface with a custom task pane.
• Generating Office Documents using the New XML Open File Formats - Generate, read and modify documents without going through the object model of the hosting Office application.

Don't forget the popcorn and coke...

From microsoft.com:

“The March 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office "v3", planned for the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio ("Orcas").

Note: This CTP requires you to have the Beta 1 Technical Refresh of Microsoft Office 2007. Only customers currently registered with the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 1 program (including the Office Developer Conference 2006 attendees) are able to install this CTP. If you are not one of them, there will be another release of this CTP coming later this spring that will be available for installation by the general public.

The primary goal of this CTP is to give Microsoft Office 2007 beta 1 technical refresh developers an early glimpse at some of the key new features and feature directions in the area of Office programmability. The upcoming release of Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a number of new technologies intended to further establish Microsoft Office as a powerful and flexible solution development platform.

The next version of Visual Studio Tools for Office is designed to help developers take better advantage of those new capabilities in Office 2007, as well as to provide additional infrastructure to ensure .NET solutions in Office run more reliably, efficiently and securely.

The highlights of this CTP include:

• Support for the new Office Open XML file formats in Microsoft Office 2007
• Support for the new UI ( “ribbon”) extensibility model in Microsoft Office 2007
• Add-In projects for Microsoft Access 2007, Microsoft Excel 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Project 2007, Microsoft Publisher 2007, Microsoft Visio 2007, and Microsoft Word 2007
• Support for the new application-level customizable taskpane”

Download here