Excel VSTO Add-ins

Discover the .NET framework and its three core components: languages, CLR, and libraries. Learn how C#, Visual Basic .NET, and others drive execution under the CLR, with libraries and versioning.

Install Visual Studio Community edition, enable Office SharePoint development, and learn the basics of Visual Basic.NET and C#, creating simple console and WinForms apps.

Learn to create a new Visual Basic console application in Visual Studio, run a hello world program, and navigate the project and solution workflow.

This lecture introduces visual basic.net as a fully object oriented language, contrasting it with visual basic six and outlining modules, classes, and types.

Learn Visual Basic in Visual Studio, with try/catch error handling, lists from System.Collections.Generic, for each loops, string contains checks, and zero-based arrays.

Explore the basics of C# within the .NET platform, and compare it to Visual Basic .NET. Learn how C# 4 introduced optional parameters and interop options for Excel VSTO development.

Discover the Excel object model and core objects—application, workbook, worksheet, and range—through Interop API, Globals access, and document versus application-level add-ins.

Explore ranges in Excel VSTO add-ins, including active cell value retrieval, selection behavior, value versus value2, casting, and null reference handling with dynamic type and IntelliSense.

Explain document level add-ins in Excel VSTO, compare with application level projects, and show how to add a ribbon, create an action pane (task pane), and host a user control.

Take a break to sharpen your Visual Studio and C-sharp skills for Excel VSTO add-ins, harnessing the power of the .NET environment with official Microsoft documentation.

Learn to create and place ribbons in Excel VSTO add-ins using the visual designer or XML methods, and customize with tabs, groups, and buttons including the data menu.

Explore ribbon controls in Excel VSTO add-ins, including group and box containers, button group differences, separators, and horizontal or vertical alignment.

Explore how to design pop up menus and galleries in Excel VSTO ribbons, configure menu items, dropdowns, and split buttons, and handle click events to open files.

Learn to add resources to your project, including image, ICO, text, audio, and video files, and assign them to controls with image properties, show image, and image IDs.

Explore how to create dialog launchers on the ribbon, open setting forms, and use Windows forms to manage user, password, and sheet settings with automatic save on form close.

Create and open a custom task pane in Excel VSTO with a user control and ribbon button, populate a combo box, and write the selected value to the active cell.

Learn to use third party libraries via the Nugget package manager, focusing on the closed XML library to simplify Excel VSTO tasks, enable faster performance, and write less code.

Review the closedXML library on GitHub, study its samples and wiki, and learn to manipulate Excel workbooks both in memory and when closed, with the using block and its APIs.

This lecture builds a small closedxml example with a button that reads data and inserts it into an active worksheet, creating a workbook, a data table, and saving the file.

Explore creating user defined functions with automation add-ins in Excel, by building a class library, enabling com interop, and exposing functions like sum and count of words to Excel.

Master writing udfs with automation add-ins in excel vsto by overwriting unwanted object methods, building and referencing function projects in visual studio, and enabling auto installation of the automation engine.

Discover how to build XLL-based UDFs with Excel DNA in Visual Studio by creating a class library, installing Excel DNA, and exposing functions with ExcelFunction and ExcelArguments attributes.

Develop xll-based udfs with excel dna part 2 by enabling tooltips and IntelliSense through a dedicated integration class, mastering range references, interior color, and release build packaging.

Compare ClickOnce deployment with Windows Installer for Excel VSTO add-ins, noting per-user versus per-machine install, lack of automatic updates, and publishing and setup steps.

Learn to build an Outlook add-in using the Outlook Interop API, create and send mail with a MailItem, and release COM objects via garbage collection.

Learn to call vsto code from vba and vice versa by exposing dotnet classes as com visible components and enable cross-environment data read and write in Excel.

Open external apps from a ribbon in Excel VSTO using the process class and start info. Pass parameters to notepad, calculator, or a python file and monitor exit codes.