Customer Reviews

Visual Studio Tools for Office: Using Visual Basic 2005 with Excel, Word, Outlook, and InfoPath

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Carter and Lippert demonstrate one of the key reasons for Microsoft's continued success over almost 30 years. From its inception, Microsoft was a tool developer, writing and selling compilers and other programming aids to programmers. In similar wise, developers who wish to extend Microsoft Office applications will be pleased by the depth of detail shown in the book. Visual Studio is the IDE that gives you a comfortable and powerful platform.

The book is rather lengthy. Few readers will likely scan it end to end. But the main reason for the heft is the number of applications within the Office suite. Excel gets 4 chapters, and so does Word. While Outlook has 3 chapters and InfoPath has one. Of these applications, it is perhaps Excel that is the most likely to be extended by third party developers. A spreadsheet is something that inherently lends itself to the idea that someone would write more intricate relations. Given that the default mode is for a user to associate cells in some formulaic fashion.

It should also be said that there are several other chapters, mostly concerned with the overall aspects of programming within VSTO. Speaking of which, there is a nice passage showing how to tie an Excel spreadsheet back to a SQL database, through the use of Binding Sources. This takes what is essentially the UI coding of the MS Office applications to a deeper level.

I would not recommend this book for an inexperienced programmer. Topics can be complicated and examples are not always clear. Good book for some of the more esoteric aspects.

Although it does not cover all areas of VSTO, and half of the time I need to dig them out by reading MSDN myself, this book is definitely a good start for VSTO programming.

With a more reality-like setup example that uses several dll:s, perhaps on a machine with a policy that prohibits new code to run this would have been a perfect book!