VSTO/VSTA Power Tools v1.0

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As I announced at the Office Developers Conference in San Jose this week, we’re releasing a set of power tools that complement the developer’s experience when building Office-based or VSTA-based solutions. These tools are freely downloadable here. We’re releasing these tools independently of our normal Visual Studio release cycle – even though in many cases we are considering rolling them into Visual Studio itself in a later release.

These tools are unsupported – if we wanted to officially support them, we’d have to invest a lot more resources in thorough implementation and testing. If we were able to invest the required level of resources, we would most probably have included them in the product in the first place. So, it’s a delicate balance: they’re unsupported because we couldn’t test them very thoroughly – but on the upside, this does allow us to release them outside the normal VS release schedule. Here’s a summary of the tools in this release:

Tool

Description

Type of Tool

Open XML Package Editor

A graphical treeview-based editor for examining and editing Open XML Package files (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents).

Add-in to Visual Studio.

Ribbon IDs ToolWindow

A custom tool window that displays all re-usable built-in Office Ribbon IDs.

Add-in to Visual Studio.

Office Custom UI Manager

A set of classes for coordinating multiple instances of Ribbon, custom task pane, and custom form region objects.

Runtime class library source code.

Office Interop API Extensions

A set of C# classes for handling parameterized properties and optional/named parameters, as well as for LINQ-enabling Office collection objects.

Runtime class library.

SharePoint Feature Sweeper

A GUI tool that cleans up unwanted SharePoint features from the developer's environment.

Standalone Windows Forms application.

SharePoint Workflow Package Generator

A tool to package a SharePoint workflow project so that it can be deployed.

Console application.

VSTO/VSTA Pipeline Verifier

A GUI tool that reflects over custom pipeline assemblies to validate the complete VSTA pipeline.

Standalone Windows Forms application.

VSTO Developer Cleaner

A GUI tool that removes leftover build artifacts from the developer's computer.

Standalone Windows Forms application.

VSTO Troubleshooter

A diagnostic tool that examines a computer for the necessary pre-requisites for running VSTO solutions.

Standalone Windows Forms application.

 

We’re obviously very interested in getting customer feedback for these tools, including any bugs that surface – and even though they’re unsupported, we will do our best to accommodate feature requests and bug fixes in any later updates to the tools. We’re hoping that this strategy of releasing independent tools will allow us to respond in a more timely fashion to identified customer requirements.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    PingBack from http://www.biosensorab.org/2008/02/21/vstovsta-power-tools-v10/
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    Back when we were working heavily on the OpenXML file format developer tools, many of us were using zip
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    Back when we were working heavily on the OpenXML file format developer tools, many of us were using zip
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    As announced in Andrew Whitechapel's post , version 1.0 of the VSTO Power Tools have been released! One
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    Nine VSTO/VSTA Power Tools were release to web today. You can download them here or read the short descriptions
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    Nine VSTO/VSTA Power Tools were release to web today. You can download them here or read the short descriptions
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    We've just announced a cool set of power tools for VSTO 3.0. These are some really cool add-ons to VSTO
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    We've just announced a cool set of power tools for VSTO 3.0. These are some really cool add-ons to
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    First off, I missed last week, it happens I'll try not to miss posting very often. That said: I have
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    I have some excellent news for any VSTO developers out there. We've released the first set of Power
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    El día de hoy quiero platicar como me fue en el Office Developer Conference 2008 (ODC2008) y algunas
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    El día de hoy quiero platicar como me fue en el Office Developer Conference 2008 (ODC2008) y algunas
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2008
    Microsoft, via le blog d' Andrew Whitechapel , vient d'annoncer la mise à disposition des Power Tools
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    The Visual Studio team has just released a set of add-ons called VSTO Power Tools . Andrew Whitechapel
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    Pochi giorni fa all’ ODC (Office Developer Conference) di San Jose è stata annunciata la disponibilità
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    Buenas, nuestros amigos de Seattle , han liberado otro set de Power Tools , pero esta vez orientado a
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    Buenas, nuestros amigos de Seattle , han liberado otro set de Power Tools , pero esta vez orientado a
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    Buenas, nuestros amigos de Seattle , han liberado otro set de Power Tools , pero esta vez orientado a
  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2008
    Hi Andrew,This is really great news. Will You set up a feedback section for the Toolkit 'somewhere' or will You be reading the comments here in the blogpost on a regular basis?Thanks,Dennis
  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2008
    Hi Dennis - we are indeed looking to set up a feedback mechanism for the tools. Meanwhile, of course, I'll pay close attention to comments here in this blog.ThanksAndrew
  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2008
    Hi AndrewGreat news, but I have a little trouble with finding the assembly Microsoft.Office.Interop.Extensions.dll and therefore I cannot (yet) eliminate the frustrating use of ref System.Type.Missing.I hope you can help.ThanksKlaus
  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2008
    Links of the Week #25 (week 8/2008)
  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2008
    Development Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes - How not to design your UI. It's hard not to nod
  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2008
    Hi Klaus,The extensions are application-specific.  For Word applications, for example, you would use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Extensions.dll.  The Microsoft.Office.Interop.Extensions.dll contained a few minor extensions that were common across the Office suite, but the assembly was omitted from this initial release.-Phil
  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2008
    Thanks, Phil!I got it to work now. I was trying to use the extension method on a different Document type, and naturally it didn't work.I just got a bit confused when I read the documentation and saw the reference to the assembly I couldn't find anywhere.:-)Klaus
  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2008
    I announced the release of v1 of the VSTO/VSTA Power Tools last time , and they've been getting quite
  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2008
    Did you want to make - - A graphical treeview-based editor/VS addin for examining and editing Open XML
  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2008
    We announced the release of VSTO power tools at Office Developer Conference (ODC). Of the many tools that we released, I will discuss the SharePoint Workflow Package Generator. Workflow package generator is a tool that creates a WSP file from a VS 2008 SharePoint workflow project...
  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2008
    Andrew Whitechapel announces VSTO/VSTA Power Tools for developers working with VSTA which includes the
  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2008
    Anyone who's been to any of my recent presentations knows that I'm a passionate advocate of developing
  • Anonymous
    May 26, 2008
    Dear Andrew.I wonder when we use VSTO for our application, and when we use OpenXML for our application?We can interactively create application using VSTO interop library, for example, create Custom form to insert text into ACTIVE document.Can we use create custom form to insert text into ACTICE document, using OpenXML library?
  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2008
    When you use ClickOnce in Visual Studio 2008 to deploy your Office solution, you can include prerequisites
  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2008
    Excel extensions with VSTO power tools