What's New for Developers in Office 2010. Overview The release of Microsoft Office 2010 offers a wealth of interesting, new scenarios and solutions that can be built by developers, thanks to new features and improvements added to Office 2010 products and technologies. Office 2010 offers powerful new ways to showcase your creativity while making it even easier to create solutions that exceed your customer requirements. Designed to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, phone, and browser, Office 2010 helps you capture your ideas creatively, work with other products and technologies more easily, and gives you the flexibility to meet changing customer requirements. This article describes and illustrates a few of the new and improved features and technologies in Office 2010 (see Figure 1) from the vantage of a developer.
Figure 1. Learn about the programmability enhancements in Office 2010 from one of its creators in this Channel 9 video. Office 2010 Fluent UI Features expression.ActivateTab(tabID As String) Figure 2. Office Fluent UI Developer Center | Backstage, Ribbon, Microsoft | MSDN. Customizing Context Menus in Office 2010. Summary: The ability to customize context menus in the Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface is a feature frequently requested by developers. Learn more about how to customize context menus and see a sample that updates an existing context menu in Microsoft Word 2010. (6 printed pages) Applies to: Microsoft Office 2010 Published: November 2009 Provided by: Frank Rice, Microsoft Corporation Contents Introducing Context Menus in Microsoft Office 2010 Prior to Microsoft Office 2010, the only way to customize context (right-click) menus in the Microsoft Office Fluent Ribbon user interface (UI) was by using CommandBars solutions.
Capabilities and Limitations of Context Menu Customization Context menu customization by using Ribbon extensibility offers you many options. You can add built-in and custom controls (those types currently supported in the Ribbon menu control) to built-in context menus as follows: Add controls at any position in the menu. Customizing Context Menu Sample Figure 2. Programming the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module. The sample add-in that accompanies this article is named SolutionsModuleAddinCS. It uses Microsoft Visual C# and requires Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Outlook 2010. The SolutionsModuleAddinCS code is concise and limited in scope. Its sole purpose is to turn on the Solutions module programmatically and, as a bonus feature, to customize the folder icons for the Solutions module. There is one method in the sample code, EnsureSolutionsModule, that is called from the Startup method of the ThisAddin class. The Startup method for the Solutions module add-in typically runs when Outlook starts, and guarantees visibility of your solution during a first run condition and every time that Outlook starts after that. private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { // Call EnsureSolutionsModule to ensure that the // Solutions module and the custom folder icons // appear in the Outlook Navigation Pane. // Obtain a reference to the SolutionsModule object.
Adding Solution-Specific Folders to the Solutions Module in Outlook 2010. Ribbon Extensibility in Office 2010: Tab Activation and Auto-Scaling. Summary: Tab activation and auto-scaling are added to the extensibility model of the ribbon in the Microsoft Office 2010 Fluent user interface. Explore these features in more detail in this article. (2 printed pages) Applies to: Microsoft Office 2010 Published: November 2009 Provided by: Frank Rice, Microsoft Corporation Contents Two frequently requested features from developers who create solutions that use the ribbon in the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface (UI) are tab activation and group auto-scaling.
In Microsoft Office 2010, you activate a custom tab by using the ActivateTab method of the IRibbonUI object as follows. expression.ActivateTab(tabID As String) To activate the custom tab, expression returns an IRibbonUI object and tabID is a String-type parameter that specifies the custom tab identifier to become active. You use the ActivateTabMso method for built-in tabs and ActivateTabQ for tabs shared between multiple add-ins. Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Customizing the Office 2010 Backstage View for Developers. Introduction to the Office 2010 Backstage View for Developers. Summary: Microsoft Office 2010 introduces the Microsoft Office Backstage view, the latest innovation in the Office Fluent User Interface, and a companion feature to the Ribbon. Examine the components that comprise the Backstage and explore scenarios that show you how you can extend the Backstage across various Office applications. (42 printed pages) Applies to: Excel 2010 | Office 2007 | Office 2010 | Open XML | PowerPoint 2010 | SharePoint Server 2010 | VBA | Word 2010 Published: November 2009 Updated: April 2010 Contents Introducing the Microsoft Office 2010 Fluent Backstage ViewGlossary of Backstage View TermsComponents of the Backstage ViewBackstage View ExtensibilityCustomizing the Backstage User Interface by Using Open XML FilesCustomizing the Backstage View by Creating a Shared COM Add-InFrequently Asked QuestionsDescriptions, Attributes, and Child Information for the Backstage View ControlsConclusionAdditional Resources Introducing the Microsoft Office 2010 Fluent Backstage View Note.
Outlook 2010 Technical Articles. Chapter 2: Outlook as a Platform. This article is an excerpt from Programming Applications for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 by Randy Byrne and Ryan Gregg, from Microsoft Press (ISBN 9780735622494, copyright Microsoft Press 2007, all rights reserved). No part of these chapters may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, electrostatic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. The platform is an essential cornerstone that contributes to the success of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Outlook won’t ever have every single feature that customers ask for. The platform allows independent software vendors (ISVs) to leverage this business opportunity by complementing Outlook functionality not available in the shipped Outlook product.
The core functionality of Outlook revolves around Mail, Calendaring, Contacts, and Tasks. Outlook 2010. VSTO: Build Office-Based Solutions Using WPF, WCF, And LINQ. OFFICE UI: New VSTO Features Help You Customize Word And Outlook. New VSTO Features Help You Customize Word And Outlook Steve Fox and Paul Stubbs This article is based on a prerelease version of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System. All information herein is subject to change. The 2007 Microsoft® Office system has evolved into a robust business application platform that you can use to build and deploy a range of Office Business Applications (OBAs). OBAs are an emerging class of applications that address real-world and critical business problems. You can build them by seamlessly integrating existing Office software and services (Microsoft Office Word, Excel® Services and SharePoint® Server) with line-of-business (LOB) systems such as SAP.
Couple the power and extensibility of the Office system with the upcoming release of Visual Studio® later this year (code-named "Orcas") and you have an extremely strong marriage of technology. Overview of VSTO In this article, we focus on a subset of the above features. Figure 5 Word Controls. Customizing the Backstage view and Ribbon UI in Office 2010 - John R. Durant's WebLog. One of the presentations I delivered at SPC 2009 was the title of this blog post.
Don't worry—I'll be posting the video when it becomes available. And, we've got some MSDN content coming out before RTM that will show you the details around programming the Microsoft Office 2010 Backstage view and the Ribbon UI. Consider this blog post the prelude to all that. I'm going to introduce you to the basics of Backstage programming. For a great intro what Backstage is go here.
Update: Mirko Mandic has newly added a post about Office 2010 UI Extensibility--- great companion reading to my post. Here's the basic flow of building your customization: Add XML markup to define the view and what it contains, then make this XML available to the Office application so it knows to load it Create methods in code to which your controls and other items in Backstage will call back. So, let's look a very simple example and understand the terms. This is called a Fast Command. Rock Thought of the Day: U2 In Las Vegas.
Outlook Solutions. Custom Task Panes Overview. Form Regions [Outlook 2007 Developer Reference] Form regions are custom pieces of user interface that can be used to customize a standard form. There are four types of form regions: adjoining form regionseparate form regionreplacement form regionreplace-all form region An adjoining form region is a form region added to the bottom of the default page of a standard Outlook form, and a separate form region is an individual page added to a standard Outlook form. Adjoining form regions and separate form regions are additive form regions. You can have up to 50 adjoining form regions and up to 30 separate form regions in a form. A replacement form region is a page that replaces the default page of a standard form, and a replace-all form region replaces all pages in a standard Outlook form. Form regions allow greater flexibility in customizing and extending a standard Outlook form in the following ways: You can add new user interface as adjoining form regions to the default page of any standard Outlook form.
Building a Document Management System with Sharepoint 2010 - Part 10 - Outlook 2010 UI. We have been exploring how to develop Ribbons for Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio. I have tried to avoid any contact with Outlook 2010 because this piece of softaware has been built in a different way in the new Office 2010. Basically, Outlook 2010 is a mixture of Outlook 2003 with Outlook 2007. That means it keeps almost the same core but with extra functionality. The best way to see this it is by looking at the User Interface. In the Outlook User Interface you can combine command bars and Ribbons, so you can still using your old addings, and if you want you can incorporate more.
I am going to concentrate in Ribbons and Context Menus User Interface development for Outlook 2010 As you remember we are integrating Sharepoint 2010 with Office 2010. For all these tasks we have to provide them a nice and simple User Interface where they will only type the client and number and click Return. The main problem with this is to insert a button in built-in tabs and context menus.