‘HowTo samples’ category archive

HowTo: Create add-ins for Office 2007, 2010 and 2013 with a shared ribbon tab

Office developers need to merge the UI of their add-ins into a single ribbon tab. Just imagine the following scenario: a user wants to install a few COM add-ins from the same vendor. Are they going to get a separate ribbon tab for each add-in's UI?... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Customize the context ribbon of Outlook 2013 inline response

After Microsoft published the Preview version of Office 2013 we started to receive lots of questions regarding built-in ribbon control IDs. Developers wanted to support the new Microsoft Office version but couldn't find the required information on MSDN. ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to customize context / right click menu of Excel 2013, 2010 and lower: C# sample

Right-click menus of Microsoft Office applications are a very convenient option for the end-user to interact with the host application. And for us, COM add-in developers, creating a custom menu for our users could be just a piece of cake... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Set a custom icon for an Outlook folder in the Navigation Pane

Today I want to show you one of the new features Outlook 2010 brought to programmers. Now Outlook allows setting custom icons the Navigation pane folders. The Outlook Object Model provides a special method for this task – SetCustomIcon. So, let's start our journey into the Outlook programming world ... Read the rest of this entry →

Advanced search in Outlook programmatically: C#, VB.NET

Today I will tell you a story about searching items in Outlook. The most powerful and reliable search is using the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class... Read the rest of this entry →

How to create an Internet Explorer Bar for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In today's post I'll show you how to write another integration to Dynamics CRM, only this time it is using Add-in Express for Internet Explorer and .net. We will write an add-on for Internet Explorer which will show the selected contact in Dynamics CRM's orders on an IE bar... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Create a new distribution list item in Outlook

Sometimes Outlook users need to send their e-mails to the same recipients. The Outlook Object Model provides the DistListItem class exactly for this task. The distribution list represents a group of contacts that are related in some way... Read the rest of this entry →

Outlook, custom task pane and drag-drop problem

I want to share a solution to the problem related to using drag-n-drop in my Outlook 2010 add-in. The task was as follows: we needed to implement a UserControl that would accept MailItem or Selection by using the dragging functions, or more precisely Drag-and-Drop. ... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Remove a Personal Folders file from the current Outlook profile

In my previous post we discussed how to add a new personal folders store to the Outlook profile. Now I would like to reveal the opposite action – how to remove a personal folders store... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Create a new Outlook Personal Folders store and add it to the current profile

Sometimes developers need to add an additional store in Outlook for archiving e-mails, making backup copies of email conversations etc. The AddStore method of the Namespace class of the Outlook Object Model provides the required functionality... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Use Restrict method to retrieve Outlook Task items

Today I would like to show you how to filter task items using the Restrict method of the Items class which the Outlook Object Model provides for developers... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Use Outlook Find and FindNext methods to retrieve Task items

In my previous articles I described how to use Find and FindNext methods to retrieve Outlook mail items, contact and calendar items. Now I am going to show you how to apply the Find and FindNext methods for Outlook task items... Read the rest of this entry →

How to intercept clicking an Office Ribbon control or command bar button

There are three ways to invoke a command of an Office application: click a built-in Ribbon button (2007-2010); click a built-in CommandBar button (Office 2000-2003 and some Office 2007 applications) and press a keyboard shortcut... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Create a new recurrent Task item in Outlook

There are two item types that can be recurrent in Outlook: appointment and task items. In one of my earlier posts described the first one. Now I am going to tell you the story about task items... Read the rest of this entry →

Excel shapes events: getting notified about user actions

The Excel object model doesn't have any events purposed for manipulations with shapes. In this blog I demonstrate an approach to solving this problem... Read the rest of this entry →

How To: Create a new Task item in Outlook

In my previous posts I have described how to create a new e-mail message, contact and appointment items. Today I am going to cover task items... Read the rest of this entry →

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