Tag Archives: Visual Studio Tools for Office

ASP.NET, Knowledge Base, Programming

Introduction to VSTO Document-Level Customizations

For many years, the only way to add interactivity to an Office workbook or document was to use VBA Macros. However, in more recent years, Microsoft has offered a newer .NET developer tool called Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). To customize a particular document or workbook using VSTO, you can use a project type called “document-level customization.” While the end-user functionality of these solutions overlap, they have very different development processes and practical implementations. In this article, we will discuss how to use VSTO document-level customizations and how they differ from their predecessor.

VSTO in a Nutshell

VSTO offers a developer two different project types: document-level customizations and application-level add-ins. Document-level customizations are projects based around a single workbook or document. Application-level add-ins, on the other hand, are add-ins affecting the UIs of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, or Microsoft InfoPath applications themselves. In this article, we will talk about document-level customizations.

By leveraging the .NET framework, VSTO can turn a document into a full-fledged application that must be installed onto an end user’s computer. While using .NET offers a programmer nearly limitless possibilities and integration with many other services and libraries, it also means that it requires Visual Studio and strong coding skills to develop the customizations. Updates to a customization will be issued from a  server or disk where the customization is deployed. However, the updates are not without limitations. VSTO updates the code attached to a document, but it does not update the visual formatting done to workbook via Visual Studio’s Designer or Excel. All visual formatting must be done in code to be included in automatic updates. A second limitation is that a user will not be able to have more than one version of the customization on their machine at one time.

VSTO Advantages VSTO Disadvantages
  • Offers full .NET framework integration
  •  A lot of developer and client requirements
  • More robust projects
  •  Because it requires VS Premium or Ultimate, it may be more expensive to develop
  • Offers new project type: Task Pane
  •  Cannot have multiple versions of a project installed on a client machine
  •  All distributed applications will be updated to be the most recent version of the application
  • Must have strong coding skills to use
  •  Uses Visual Studio to develop code
  •  VSTO will update the code attached  to a document, but it will not update designer or template formatting
  •  Can use VBA macros inside of documents containing VSTO document-level customizations
  •  VSTO code is not located within the document, but is installed separately

Compared with VBA

VBA has been around since 1993 and is the simplest way to add interactivity to an Office document. The basic advantages and disadvantages of using VBA are outlined below: Continue reading Introduction to VSTO Document-Level Customizations →