Visual Studio Tools for Office

Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is a set of development tools available in the form of a Visual Studio add-in 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 the .NET type system. As a result, it allows extensions to the Office applications to be written in .NET languages (extensions to Office previously were DLLs or COM add-ins written using Visual Basic, C++ or VBA) as well as to use functionality and user interface constructs from Office applications in .NET applications. [ [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d2tx7z6d.aspx Visual Studio Tools for Office] ] VSTO supersedes developer versions of Office 2000 and Office XP for office development. The runtime, although part of VSTO, is also downloadable separately.

The VSTO add-ins (project types and controls) allow VSTO applications and Office add-ins to be developed using the Visual Studio IDE. For Visual Studio 2003 and 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. 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. [ [http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/archive/2006/11/09/visual-studio-2005-tools-for-the-2007-office-system-vsto-2005-se-released-to-the-web.aspx Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Office System (VSTO 2005 SE) Released to the Web] ] [ [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa942839(VS.80).aspx VSTO features available by product combination] ] With Visual Studio 2008, VSTO 3.0 is no longer available separately but is integrated with full functionality into Professional and Team System IDEs. VSTO version 3.0 and its runtime only work with Office 2007.

Comparison with VBA

Like VBA, code written for VSTO is executed by a separate virtual machine (the CLR) which is hosted inside the Microsoft Office applications. However, unlike VBA, where the code is stored in the document file themselves, programs written for VSTO are stored in separate .NET assemblies which are associated with the documents by means of custom properties. [http://www25.brinkster.com/fumiaki2/blog/archives.aspx?month=2003-10 More on Word and Excel as CLR hosts] ] If the properties are present, Microsoft Office hosts the CLR and loads the assembly specified in the property into a separate Appdomain named after the document's name. [ [http://www25.brinkster.com/fumiaki2/blog/archives.aspx?month=2003-10 Another CLR hosts are shipped from Microsoft] ] VSTO applications are subject to the .NET Framework Code Access Security constraints, in addition to the digital signature based permission model that governs VBA macros. [ [http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2003/11/03/56304.aspx VSTO Security Model] ]

ee also

*Microsoft Visual Studio
*Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA)

References

External links

* [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905533.aspx Visual Studio Tools for Office homepage]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5e86cab3-6fd6-4955-b979-e1676db6b3cb&DisplayLang=en VSTO 2.0 SE (VS 2005) Add-in (Office 2003 and Office 2007)]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8315654b-a5ae-4108-b7fc-186402563f2b&DisplayLang=en VSTO 2.0 SE (VS 2005) Runtime for Office 2003 and Office 2007]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=54eb3a5a-0e52-40f9-a2d1-eecd7a092dcb&DisplayLang=en VSTO 3.0 (VS 2008) Runtime for Office 2007]