Programming Office 2010 - 2000 add-in / plug-in, 
RTD, XLL in Visual Studio .NET: C++, C#, VB.NET

Add-in Express™
for Microsoft® Office and .net

Microsoft Office extensibility and Add-in Express

Add-in Express for .NET is a feature-rich tool that empowers you to program all types of application-level customization for Microsoft Office 2000 - 2010, including COM Add-ins, Smart Tags, Excel RTD servers and Excel XLL (user defined functions) in Visual Studio .NET. Add-in Express is completely based on the .NET Framework and integrated into Visual Studio. Add-in Express doesn't require profound knowledge of the COM Add-in, Smart Tag and RTD Server technologies and allows a .NET developer to quickly start new projects using Add-in Express wizards, modules, visual designers and components.

Add-in Express project wizards

To the New Project dialog, Add-in Express adds four new wizards, COM Add-in, RTD Server, Smart Tag and XLL Add-in that generate corresponding solutions on C#, VB.NET, C++ and Delphi Prism. 

Add-in Express COM Add-in = Microsoft Office add-in

Add-in Express realizes the IDTExtensibility2 and IRibbonExtensibility interfaces required by the COM Add-in specification. It includes components and designers for customization of Office menus, toolbars, ribbons as well as for enhanced customization, e.g. Advanced Excel Task Panes and Advanced Outlook Form and View Regions. Finally, using the Office Primary Interop Assemblies (provided by Microsoft) or version-neutral Office interop assemblies (included in Add-in Express) you access Office objects and their events.

COM add-ins based on Add-in Express support all Office applications, namely:

  • Outlook 2000 - 2010
  • Excel 2000 - 2010
  • Word 2000 - 2010
  • Visio 2002 - 2010
  • FrontPage 2000 - 2003
  • MapPoint 2004
  • PowerPoint 2000 - 2010
  • Project 2000 - 2010
  • Access 2000 - 2010
  • InfoPath 2007, 2010
  • Publisher 2003 - 2010

Add-in Express Smart Tag = Microsoft Office smart tag library

For Office smart tags, Add-in Express implements both versions of the Smart Tag technology by utilizing the ISmartTagRecognizer and ISmartTagRecognizer2 interfaces. With Add-in Express you can develop static and dynamic recognizers (stand-alone smart tags or smart tag libraries). Smart tag projects based on Add-in Express include one or several smart tags, and each of them may contain its action list and one or several recognizable words (phrases, masks, etc.). Finally, using smart tag-specific events you can create dynamic recognizers.

Smart tag solutions produced by Add-in Express completely support all Office applications compatible with the Smart Tag technology. Today these are Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook 2002 and higher. See how to write a sample Word smart tag in .NET.

Excel RTD servers, Automation add-ins and XLLs

In addition to Office COM add-ins and smart tags, Add-in Express delivers three Excel-specific solutions: Real-Time Data Servers,  Automation Add-ins and XLLs.  An RTD server can make Excel a client for any real-time data sources. Add-in Express RTDS solutions are inproc-servers (DLLs) that may contain an unlimited number of real-time data topics, linear or nested. With Automation Add-ins you develop your own worksheet functions that end-users can use in formulas in their workbooks. All Excel automation add-ins are ordinary COM add-ins but registered in a special way. One more effective technology that empowers you to create new Excel functions is XLL. You can use Add-in Express for programming XLL solutions of any-scale, e.g. with one function or hundreds of functions.

RTD Servers, Automation Add-ins and XLLs work on Excel 2002 and higher. See also a sample RTD server in .NET,  Automation Add-in project and XLL project.
See Also
Building COM add-ins, smart tags, RTD servers on .NET - Flash video