Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)

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A Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is a software development framework in the form of a Visual Studio add-in and a runtime library that allows Microsoft Office applications to host the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR).

References

2023

  • (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Tools_for_Office Retrieved:2023-8-25.
    • Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is a set of development tools available in the form of a Visual Studio add-in (project templates) and a runtime that allows Microsoft Office 2003 and later versions of Office applications to host the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR) to expose their functionality via .NET.

      This allows extensions to the Office applications to be written in CLI compliant languages as well as to use functionality and user interface constructs from Office applications in .NET applications. Extensions to Office prior to Office 2003 only allowed the creation of COM add-ins using Visual Basic or Visual C++ and a "Developer" edition was also offered that enabled VBA developers to create COM Add-ins. VSTO supersedes developer editions of Office 2000 and Office XP for Office development. The developer editions of Office have been discontinued after Office XP and VSTO is available for Office 2003 and later versions only. The VSTO runtime, although part of VSTO development tools, is also downloadable separately if required. COM addin development is still possible for Office 2000 and all later versions using the Shared Add-in template in any version of Microsoft Visual Studio. The VSTO add-ins (project types and controls) are also developed using Visual Studio. For Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005, it was available only as a standalone edition with support for .NET languages limited to Visual Basic.NET and C#. It was also included as a part of the Visual Studio Team System 2005. Later on, the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE) was released as a free add-in to Visual Studio Professional and above that includes Office 2007 and 2003 support. However, for Visual Studio Professional Edition, it installs only the application-level add-ins; it does not add the document-level customizations or other functionality (actions pane, host controls, visual document designer, etc.) available in the full version of VSTO or Team System editions. [1]

      The current version is Visual Studio Tools for Office 2012 (VSTO 4.5) which is compatible with Office 2016, Office 2013, Office 2010, and Office 2007.

  1. ↑ VSTO features available by product combination

2023

  • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/office-solutions-development-overview-vsto
    • QUOTE: By using Microsoft Office as the front end for solutions, you can take advantage of the familiar Microsoft Office user interfaces and tools such as the word processing features in Word, the data analysis features of Excel, and the e-mail management features of Outlook. You can develop solutions in Visual Studio to customize Office applications and add the specific features you need for your business processes. For example, you can turn Word into a contract generator that assembles contracts out of pre-existing parts that can be made editable or not editable. With Excel, you can create an automated budget worksheet customized for different projects. Your users can also take office solutions offline, which makes complex solutions more practical than they would be if you use a web-based architecture.

      This topic provides an overview of the types of Office solutions that you can create by using the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) templates available in the Office developer tools in Visual Studio.

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