Outlook plug-in development: build menu bar, explorer and
inspector toolbars, custom shortcuts - C#, C++, VB.NET

Outlook is a featured application for Add-in Express

It's not a secret that Outlook, being the main business application from the Microsoft Office Suite, is also the most popular target application for the majority of Office developers. In view of this, Add-in Express offers some additional functionality that you can benefit from in your Outlook plug-in development:

• Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions specially designed for customizing Outlook windows with .NET forms and controls.
• Separate support of two types of Outlook windows, Explorer and Inspector windows, empowers you to create Explorer and Inspector-specific toolbars and ribbons.
• With Outlook context-sensitivity you can binds your toolbars, menus, ribbons or selected controls to certain Outlook windows, folders or context.
• Option and folder property pages embed .NET forms into the main Outlook Options and Folder Properties dialogs.
• You can use Navigation pane shortcuts to add your custom set of shortcuts to the Navigation Pane.
• Outlook-specific events of the add-in module make Outlook development more comfortable than PIA-based event helpers.

Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions

The main feature provided by Add-in Express that many Outlook developers took fancy of is called Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions. It gives you the possibility to embed any .NET forms practically into all Outlook windows as shown in the picture below.

Three additional panes, My Links, Alerts and Sales Report, on the main Outlook window in the picture above are typical .NET forms embedded by Add-in Express using Advanced Outlook Form and View Regions.

Explorer and Inspector toolbars and ribbons

Add-in Express distinguishes between two main types of Outlook windows, Explorer and Inspector, providing you with separate toolbar components. Each of them was developed with regard to all habits of behavior of the respective Outlook window, as well as navigation and synchronization between them. Consider this: with these components you needn't track context and constant reconnects when switching between Outlook windows. Whenever you refer to your toolbars you can be sure they exist in the current active context whether it is the current active Explorer or one of several opened Inspectors.

In respect to the Ribbon UI on the Outlook 2007 Inspector window, Add-in Express supports ribbon customization for all contexts and ribbons published by Outlook 2007, namely:

Please note, you don't code ribbons and context, you specify them via the corresponding properties and designers of Add-in Express components. More about Office Ribbon UI and toolbar designers.

Outlook context-sensitivity

Another in-demand feature provided by Add-in Express for your Outlook development is the possibility to bind toolbars or toolbar controls to certain Outlook folders. Each Outlook-specific component publishes special properties that bind the component (a toolbar or a toolbar control) to the folders specified by their names or by their content. As you can see in the picture below, a toolbar will be shown for all mail and task folders. Please note, in the same manner you can organize different sets of controls on one toolbar or different sets of toolbars for different Outlook folders. No coding is required, simply use the appropriate properties of toolbar and control components.

The main Options dialog and folder property pages

You can use Add-in Express to add custom tabs to the main Options dialog of Outlook as well as to the Properties dialog of certain folders. No coding is required either. You can create a form for the option page based on the Add-in Express template (available through the Add New Item dialog of the add-in project) and select the form in the corresponding property of the ADXModule. See the picture below.

Navigation Pane shortcuts

Add-in Express has a component specially designed for customizing the Navigation Pane with your own groups of shortcuts. The component contains a visual designer for shortcut groups and shortcuts and makes all work with shortcuts easy and no-coding.

Outlook-specific events and event helpers

Finally, the ADXModule publishes a plenty of Outlook-specific events available without manual creation of event sinks and helpers.

You can find all Outlook events that are directly available from the ADXModule in the following list:

Outlook Application events

• AdvancedSearchComplete
• AdvancedSearchStopped
• AttachmentContextMenuDisplay
• BeforeFolderSharingDialog
• BeforeOptionPageAdd
• ContextMenuClose
• FolderContextMenuDisplay
• ItemContextMenuDisplay
• ItemLoad
• ItemSend
• MAPILogonComplete
• NewMail
• NewMailEx
• OfficeColorSchemeChanged
• OptionPagesAdd
• Quit
• Reminder
• ShortcutContextMenuDisplay
• Startup
• StoreContextMenuDisplay
• ViewContextMenuDisplay

Outlook Explorer events

• ExplorerActivate
• ExplorerAddCommandBars
• ExplorerFolderSwitch
• ExplorerBeforeItemCopy
• ExplorerBeforeItemCut
• ExplorerBeforeItemPaste
• ExplorerBeforeMaximize
• ExplorerBeforeMinimize
• ExplorerBeforeMove
• ExplorerBeforeSize
• ExplorerBeforeViewSwitch
• ExplorerSelectionChange
• ExplorerViewSwitch
• NewExplorer

Outlook Inspector events

• InspectorActivate
• InspectorAddCommandBars
• InspectorBeforeMaximize
• InspectorBeforeMinimize
• InspectorBeforeMove
• InspectorBeforeSize
• InspectorClose
• InspectorDeactivate
• PageChange
• NewInspector