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Add-in Express components
Events
Application-level events
In the Add-in Express Toolbox, there is the Add Events command that adds and/or removes appropriate events components to the module.
The events components allow accessing application-level events for all Office applications. You use event handlers of such an event component
to respond to events of the host application. You may need to process other events provided by Outlook and Excel. If this is the case, see
Event classes.
Event classes
Outlook and Excel differ from other Office applications because they have event-raising objects not only at the topmost level of their
object models. These exceptions are Worksheet in Excel, and Folders, Items and all Item sorts in Outlook. Naturally, you
need to handle events from these sources. Add-in Express Event classes provide you with components that ease the pain of handling such events.
Add-in Express Event classes are host-version independent. The Add-in Express event classes also handle releasing of COM objects required for
their functioning.
At design-time, you add an Add-in Express events class to the project (see
Step 13. Handling events of Outlook Items Object and
Step 10. Handling Excel worksheet events)
and use its event procedures to write the code for just one set of event handling rules for a given event source type (say, Items collection
of an Outlook folder). To implement another set of event handling rules for the same event source type, you add another Add-in Express event class
to your project.
At run-time, you connect an Add-in Express event class instance to an event source using its ConnectTo method. To disconnect the
Add-in Express event class from the event source you use the RemoveConnection method. To apply the same business rules to another
event source of the same type (say, to items of another folder), you create a new instance of the same event class.
What follow below is the source of a newly added Event Class that processes the events of the Items collection of the
MAPIFolder class in Outlook (Folder class in Outlook 2007).
Imports System
'Add-in Express Outlook Items Events Class
Public Class OutlookItemsEventsClass1
Inherits AddinExpress.MSO.ADXOutlookItemsEvents
Public Sub New(ByVal ADXModule As AddinExpress.MSO.ADXAddinModule)
MyBase.New(ADXModule)
End Sub
Public Overrides Sub ProcessItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
'TODO: Add some code
End Sub
Public Overrides Sub ProcessItemChange(ByVal Item As Object)
'TODO: Add some code
End Sub
Public Overrides Sub ProcessItemRemove()
'TODO: Add some code
End Sub
End Class
Intercepting keyboard shortcuts
Every Office application provides built-in keyboard combinations that allow shortening the access path for commands, features, and options of
the application. Add-in Express allows adding custom keyboard combinations and processing both custom and built-in ones.
Add the component onto ADXAddinModule, choose the keyboard shortcut you need in the ShortcutText property, set the
HandleShortCuts property of the Add-in Express Module to true and process the Action event of the KeyboardShortcut component.
Outlook UI components
Outlook Bar Shortcut Manager component
Outlook provides us with the Outlook Bar (Navigation Pane in Outlook 2003-2010). The Outlook Bar displays Shortcut groups consisting
of Shortcuts that you can target a Microsoft Outlook folder, a file-system folder, or a file-system path or URL.
You use the Outlook Bar Shortcut Manager to customize the Outlook Bar with your shortcuts and groups.
This component is available for ADXAddinModule. Use the Groups collection of the component to create a new shortcut group.
Use the Shortcuts collection of a short group for creating a new shortcut. To connect to an existing shortcut or shortcut group, set the
Caption properties of the corresponding ADXOlBarShortcut and / or ADXOlBarGroup components equal to the caption
of the existing shortcut or shortcut group. Please note, there are no other ways to identify the group or shortcut.
That is why your shortcuts and shortcut groups must be named uniquely for Add-in Express to remove them (and not those with the same names)
when the add-in is uninstalled. That is why you have to do this yourself. Depending on the type of its value, the Target property of
the ADXOlBarShortcut component allows you to specify different shortcut types. If the type is MAPIFolder, the shortcut
represents a Microsoft Outlook folder. If the type is a String, the shortcut represents a file-system path or a URL. No events are available for these components.
Outlook Property Page component
Outlook allows extending its Options dialog with custom pages. You see this dialog when you choose Tools | Options menu. In addition,
Outlook allows adding such a page to the Folder Properties dialog. You see this dialog when you choose the Properties item in the folder
context menu. You create such pages using the Outlook Property Page component.
In Visual Studio, open the Add New Item dialog and choose the Outlook Options Page item to add a class
to your project. This class is a descendant of the System.Windows.Forms.UserControl class. It allows creating Outlook property
pages using its visual designer. Just set up the property page properties, place your controls onto the page, and add your code. To add this page
to the Outlook Options dialog, select the name of your control class in the PageType combo of ADXAddinModule and enter some
characters into the PageTitle property.
To add a page to the Folder Properties dialog for a given folder(s), you use the FolderPages collection of the Add-in Express module.
Run its property editor and add an item (of the ADXOlFolderPage type). You connect the item to a given property page through the
PageType property. Note, the FolderName, FolderNames, and ItemTypes properties of the ADXOlFolderPage
component work in the same way as those of Outlook-specific command-bars.
Specify reactions required by your business logics in the Apply and Dirty event handlers. Use the OnStatusChange
method to raise the Dirty event, the parameters of which allow marking the page as Dirty.
Smart Tag component
The Kind property of the ADXSmartTag component allows you to choose one of two text recognition strategies: either using a
list of words in the RecognizedWords string collection or implementing a custom recognition process based on the Recognize
event of the component. Use the ActionNeeded event to change the Actions collection according to the current context.
The component raises the PropertyPage event when the user clicks the Property button in the Smart Tags tab (Tools / AutoCorrect
Options menu) for your smart tag.
RTD Topic component
Use the String## properties to identify the topic of your RTD server. To handle RTD Server startup situations nicely, specify the
default value for the topic and, using the UseStoredValue property, specify, if the RTD function in Excel returns the default value
(UseStoredValue = false) or doesn't change the displayed value (UseStoredValue = true). The RTD Topic component provides you
with the Connect, Disconnect, and RefreshData events. The last one occurs (for enabled topics only) whenever Excel
calls the RTD function.
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