The Problem Solver : VSTO

Nederlandse CodeCamp 2009

Maurice — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:26:00 GMT

Op 21 november 2009 organiseren de SDN, Stichting dotNed en VBcentral samen het derde Nederlandse Code Camp. Dit is een dag lang met code, code sharing, freaking en gezellig samenzijn. Een evenement door ontwikkelaars, voor ontwikkelaars. De regie ligt voor een belangrijk deel bij de deelnemers! Het aantal plaatsen voor deelnemers is wel beperkt tot maximaal 150. Wacht dus niet te lang met beslissen want voor je het weet is er geen plaats meer. Vergeet bij je aanmelding niet op te geven welke onderwerpen je interesse hebben. Bovendien nodigen we iedereen graag uit om zelf een sessie in te vullen.

Op de website, www.codecamp.nl, vind je meer informatie en kan je je aanmelden.

Nationale Office Dag files

Maurice — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:54:43 GMT

Looking for the slides and samples from my two presentations at the Nationale Office Dag in Ede? You can download them from here.

Enjoy!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
Wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

PDC session download

Maurice — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:17:52 GMT

Want to download and watch all PDC content? Then there are a couple of ways to get at them. The official way if to go through the session agenda at the conference site. See https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx. You see all sessions but it takes a bit of work. Another nice way is through Channel 9 by using the following feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/pdc2008/RSS/?tag=videos.

But the best as far as I am concerned is using the list compiled by Greg Duncan. Check this list http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/10/pdc2008-quick-video-link-list.html. And it even has the Visual Basic source code used to generate the list

Enjoy the videos!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
Wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Red Gate to continue development of .NET Reflector

Maurice — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:04:54 GMT

.NET Reflector, by Lutz Roeder, must be one of the most useful tools I have when developing .NET code. Usually it is the first thing I install right after Visual Studio not even waiting until I need it because I know I will.

So the big news is that Red Gate, makers of the Ants profiler and lots of other tools, are taking over from Lutz Roeder and will continue developing .NET Reflector. Interesting move and I hope this means a bright future for the .NET Reflector.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 available

Maurice — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:33:33 GMT

It is available from the subscriptions download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx

Get it while it is hot

Enjoy!

CodeCamp 2008

Maurice — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:39:22 GMT

Afgelopen jaar hebben we het eerste CodeCamp in Nederland georganiseerd en dat was een groot succes. De meeste deelnemers vroegen om meer, sommige zelfs om een CodeCamp per kwartaal of een heel weekend lang. Nou hebben we dat laatste nog niet gedaan maar we zijn wel aan de slag gegaan om een nieuw CodeCamp te organiseren. Als datum hebben we zaterdag 6 september gekozen. Gelukkig waren Microsoft en Class-a behulpzaam en kunnen we, net als vorig jaar, weer in het Microsoft Innovation Center in Barneveld terecht. Een mooie datum en locatie om uitgerust van de vakantie een hoop kennis uit te wisselen.

Het programma staat nog niet helemaal vast, hou daar de website voor in de gaten, maar je kan er ondermeer de bekende Nederlandse sprekers verwachten. Uiteraard kan je zelf ook nog een sessie voorstellen dus als je een idee hebt voor een leuke sessie laat het dan zo snel mogelijk weten.

Dus zet de datum vast in je agenda en meld je zo snel mogelijk aan op de website www.code-camp.nl.

Het CodeCamp is een gezamenlijk initiatief van de SDN, de stichting DotNed en VB Central.

How to Download all of Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Maurice — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:05:00 GMT

VS2008 SP1 Beta is quite a package. By default the installation downloads the packages as needed and when needed. Now that is just fine if you only need to install a single machine. But when you need to install multiple, possibly virtual, machines like I have to it just wastes a lot of bandwidth and time . Fortunately there is a solution and it can be found here in the blog post by Heath Stewart.

Enjoy!

Who writes a blog post?

Maurice — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:22:26 GMT

The recent release of the .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 beta Service Pack 1 has started an interesting discussion over on Microsoft Watch. Joe Wilcox writes about how some of these posts seem predated and about seeing some blog post before being published, under embargo, just as previously happened with press releases. he raises an interesting question: are blog posts degraded to just just another marketing outlet and, possibly, not even written by the people under whose name they are published?

There may well be some truth in this as blog are an important communication feature. And why would a pr or marketing person ignore such an obvious opportunity. So I am sure that some blog posts are really just PR. But than again I also believe that the vast majority is real and, other that the writers conviction that MS is the best thing since sliced bread, is trying to be objective.

Read the full article by Joe Wilcox here.

Enjoy!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Samples from my VSTO session in Galway

Maurice — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:40:52 GMT

Attached are the session slides and samples from my Visual Studio Tools for Office session I did in Galway earlier today. Hope you enjoyed the presentation as much as I did

Download them here.

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Visual Studio Tools for Office voor Visual Basic for Application ontwikkelaars

Maurice — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:50:28 GMT

Op 6 maart heb ik een presentatie geven bij de Nationale Office Dag in Ede. Hier zijn de slides en voorbeelden te downloaden.

Enjoy!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Visual Studio Tools for Office and Visual Basic for Applications interoperability

Maurice — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:40:39 GMT

One of the cool new features in VSTO v3 is interoperability between VSTO and VBA code in your Office document. The basic steps are pretty simple:

Create a Word document with some VBA code. It doesn't really matter what it just as long as it has some code.
Save the document as a macro enabled document so it has the DOCM extension.
Create a new VSTO project.
Instead of new blank document base it on the just created document.
In the property sheet set the EnableVBaCaller property to true.
Add a public function to the ThisDocument class.

Setting the EnableVBaCaller property actually adds some an extra property to the existing VBA code with the name CallVSTOAssembly. This CallVSTOAssembly property is basically a proxy to the ThisDocument object letting you call all public functions from your VBA code.

It works pretty well except for a few things.

Every time you compile and run the Word document opened is overwritten so any changes to the VBA code there are also overwritten. Now this is expected behavior but in this case a bit annoying as this is the only place you can edit the VBA code. In fact from within VS2008 there is no way to get to the VBA code at all. So this means opening the project version of the Word document outside if VS2008 using Word itself and copy and pasting all code changes made. And if you do this you need to make sure the document isn't open in VS2008 or Word will complain loudly .

Another problem I had was with the CallVSTOAssembly property. With all the cut and paste actions of VBA code I actually screwed up and added the code for a CallVSTOAssembly property from another solution. The result was no complaints or warnings but a CallVSTOAssembly property looking for the wrong class, actually the wrong namespace. And the result was that all interop came to a grinding halt. As the expected CallVSTOAssembly property was there it took me a while to realize that the namespace was wrong. So if you find that the CallVSTOAssembly property doesn't seem to work and offers no IntelliSense when editing your VBA code just remove it and toggle the EnableVBaCaller to false and back to true to have VS2008 reinsert the correct code .

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386306.aspx for more info in VSTO VBA interoperability.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio Tools for Office talks

Maurice — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:27:22 GMT

Next week Thursday, March 6^th, I will be doing two talks about VSTO for VBA developers at the Nationale Office Dag in Ede.

Check the website for more info about the event.

Hope to see you there

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! Day - Ireland

Maurice — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:11:00 GMT

On May 3^rd GAMTUG, the Galway Area Microsoft Technology Users Group, is organizing the DDD Ireland and I will be there doing a session on Workflow Foundation in a SOA architecture and a seconds session about using the new VSTO version 3 features that ship with Visual Studio 2008.

Check out the video for a preview

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit

Maurice — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:53:50 GMT

Looking for more information about VS2008 and .NET 3.5?

I suspect you might just be as there is a ton of new functionality and with the pace of everything coming out it isn't likely that you know it all

To help learn the new stuff Microsoft has put a Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 training kit together with lots of labs and presentations. Just go through the list and check what you would like to know more about.

You can download the trainings kit from here.

Enjoy!

VSTO Session downloads

Maurice — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:09:31 GMT

Last week I did a session on VSTO for the Dutch VBcentral user group. You can download the samples and PowerPoint slides from their web site over here. Keep in mind that the sheets are in Dutch .

Enjoy the samples, I enjoyed the presentation!

Visual Studio Tools for Office and the ActionsPane

Maurice — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:00:18 GMT

If you want to add functionality to a specific Office document a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) ActionsPane is a very convenient way of doing so if you are a .NET developer.

Each document has a single associated ActionsPane so in this respect it is very different from a custom task pane as you can have multiple task panes. The actions pane is basically a WinForms UserControl, ok with the additional functionality of being able to work with Office, so adding controls is easy. Just like this:

Me.ActionsPane.Controls.Add(New TextBox())

Of course adding separate controls like this is probably not the best way to go. I would suggest designing your UI in one or more UserControls and adding these as it makes the layout so much easier.

When designing you controls you need to keep in mind that an actions pane can be moved and the orientation can change from vertical to horizontal. When this happens the ActionsPane.OrientationChanged event fires so that one is easy to take care of.

Private Sub OrientationChangedHandler() _

Handles ActionsPane.OrientationChanged

If Me.ActionsPane.Orientation = Orientation.Vertical Then

Else

' Me.ActionsPane.Orientation = Orientation.Horizontal

End If

End Sub

One thing I find less than intuitive is showing or hiding the actions pane. I would have expected something like a visible property to do so. Not so as this only makes the contents visible or invisible if the action pane is shown. If the actions pane itself is invisible you need to use the DisplayDocumentActionTaskPane property scoped to the application object. Somewhat confusing and judging from the property name so was the original developer. What am I showing here? An ActionsPane or a TaskPane? Hmm not sure, let's just put both in the name so everyone will be as confused as I am O well, except for this inconsistency its really easy to use the ActionsPane

Private Sub Button1_Click( _

ByVal sender As System.Object, _

ByVal e As Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonControlEventArgs) _

Handles Button1.Click

Globals.ThisWorkbook.Application.DisplayDocumentActionTaskPane = True

End Sub

Did I mention you can even add WPF content to an actions pane? Hmm guess I forgot to say you can. Just make sure you wrap it in a System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost control.

Enjoy!

Creating a MOSS 2007 VPC

Maurice — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:25:30 GMT

Installing MOSS 2007 is quite a bit of work and very easy to mess up if you do it in the wring order

To help Tony Zink has created a very detailed series of blog posts showing the complete process. He is very detailed and has a lot of useful tips so make sure you read this before you start!

Enjoy MOSS!

Automating Microsoft Word from Visual Basic

Maurice — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:42:21 GMT

Using COM to automate Word from your Visual Basic application isn't very hard. Just did a sample for a friend and decided to share it. Not that the sample is very complicated or anything, quite the opposite in fact. But it does show how easy it is to get started

The sample code below shows how to construct a minimal document, insert a bookmark and, at a later moment, replace the empty bookmark with some text.

Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word

Module Module1

Sub Main()

Dim word As New Application

word.Visible = True

Dim doc As Document = word.Documents.Add()

Dim range As Range = doc.Range

' Insert some text

range.InsertAfter("Range1" + vbCrLf)

' Insert a bookmark, make sure the range is 0 characters long so we can insert text

range.Collapse(WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd)

doc.Bookmarks.Add("MijnBookmark", range)

' Add some more text

range.InsertAfter("Range2" + vbCrLf)

' Get a reference to the bookmark

Dim bookmark As Bookmark = doc.Bookmarks(1)

range = bookmark.Range

' Insert the text

range.Text = "Bookmark" + vbCrLf

' Change the font for the bookmark

range.Font.Color = WdColor.wdColorRed

range.Font.Italic = 1

End Sub

End Module

One thing to keep in mind when automating Word is that, in general, it is better to use Range objects instead of the Selection. One reason is that there is only one selection while you can have multiple ranges but there is also a performance penalty to using the selection. And don't forget to install the Office PIA's when using Office through COM from .NET.

Another useful thing is the Word Macro Recorder. It is still there in Word 2007 but hidden away in the Developer Ribbon bar. Kind of strange as the macro recorder was always the simplest way of automating Word for the average user and they typically don't have the developer ribbon visible.

Enjoy!

TechEd day 2

Maurice — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:52:33 GMT

So another day at TechEd Barcelona. Not all that much to report though. I had booth duty at the Ask The Experts booth all day so didn't get to see any sessions yet. The booth was pretty quiet with not to many questions, so not much to report there. Now I am waiting for the last session slot of the day. I am going to What is new in WPF 3.5 by Ian Griffiths. I don't think I have heard him before so I am just as interested in the speaker as the topic.

This evening we are getting together for the MVP dinner, which is always good fun

TechEd Developers 2007

Maurice — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:17:19 GMT

Less than a week to go to TechEd Developers this year. And really looking forward to it

This year I will be working as one of the experts in the Office development booth in the Microsoft Ask The Experts Lounge. If you are in Barcelona come by and say hi and maybe we can grab a beer or two

See you there!