Start of VSTO development

Question

I am very confused by what is a necessary tool for VSTO . In particular, I want to programmatically process Excel 2003/2007 documents. I have done quite a lot of VBA if you want to associate any answer with it.

A few questions I have about VSTO:

• Is it possible to use Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition C # / C ++ for this?
• Do I need to install the .NET framework?
• Does VSTO require a copy of Office installed on the same system?

Check out direct links to related tools / plugins / IDEs.

Note. I am completely new to VSTO and .NET, but to the Power user. I have experience in COM programming.

Answer 1

Yes, this can be confusing, especially considering naming conventions at the skip level, etc. Essentially, you will need:

• The full version (not Express) of Visual Studio and .NET that you are aiming for.
• One of the VSTO time periods (VSTO 2003, VSTO 2005, VSTO 2005 SE, VSTO 2008, VSTO 2010). For what you ask, the VSTO 2005 SE is probably the best choice.
• When you distribute your application, you will need more, such as the PIA and the .NET version that you are targeting. For VSTO 2010, you do not need a PIA (only what you use will be automatically packaged with your application).

A few tips:

• The transition from VBE within Office to VSTO should be a smooth move if you have used .NET to a large extent.
• VSTO versions of the model object for any given program (Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) There may be slightly more ways to do things that are different / better than in the VBA version of the object model. For example, the Bookmark control for Word in VSTO 2008 is not the same as the one that is native to one access through VBA.
• Distributing your application can be painful. For this reason, VSTO for Visual Studio 2010 does not require you to include full interaction (PIA) files with your package.
• Assigning different versions of Office with the same solution is not officially supported for the period until VSTO 2010. There are ways around this problem that some people talked about, but you won’t get much support from MSFT on it.

There are several sites that you should pay attention to:

• VSTO solution requirements . This is older but useful to read regarding the differences between 2005 and 2005 SE. This one is also worthy in that it includes the 2008 version.
• Online resources for VSTO . This is a good jump site for learning more about VSTO.
• Getting started (Visual Studio Tools for Office) . This, and this is the sister of the page link, a good page jump. Not so useful if you're just approaching speed with VSTO, but good for a bit later.
• Can you create one add-in for multiple versions of Office? . This is older, but discusses some of the issues related to several versions of Office.
• This site was better but I always found that video is a very quick way to find out. Most of these videos use one version of VSTO.

Finally, to preserve the best for the latter, this is a book I read when I was just starting out, and it was very useful: VSTO for Mute Mortals (TM): VBA Developer's Guide for Developing Microsoft Office Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office

Answer 2

SpreadsheetGear for .NET is an Excel compatible component for .NET that will work with Visual Studio Express editions, requires .NET 2.0 or higher, does not require Office or Excel, and allows free distribution of licenses for an unlimited number of client and / or server computers.

You can see live examples here and download a free trial here .

Disclaimer: I have SpreadsheetGear LLC

Answer 3

You can create excel using Express Edition using this Excel.NET component . It does not require automation of VSTO, ADO or MS Excel.

Excel component Jetcell.NET allows you to read an Excel spreadsheet. Here you can find many Excel VB.NET and C # examples . For example, see VB.NET Code to create an Excel table from an array:

Imports DTG.Spreadsheet ... Dim WBook = New ExcelWorkbook() WBook.Worksheets.Add("ArrayValues") For i As Short = 0 To 10 For j As Short = 0 To 10 WBook.Worksheets(0).Cells[i,j].Value = arr(i,j) j = j + 1 Next j i = i + 1 Next i WBook.WriteXLSX("ExcelSpreadsheet.xlsx")