Customize Outlook forms and views with .NET controls
in Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2010 and 2008

Add-in Express™ Regions
for Microsoft® Outlook® and VSTO


Supported IDEs

  • Visual Studio 2008
  • Visual Studio 2010
  • Requires VSTO installed

  • Visual Basic .NET
  • Visual C# .NET

Supported apps

  • Outlook 2003
  • Outlook 2007
  • Outlook 2010 (x86 and x64)

Add-in Express Regions for Microsoft Outlook and VSTO is the newest addition to our catalogue of leading edge, RAD development tools for building Microsoft Office solutions with Visual Studio. It is an extension of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2008 and 2010 that allows you to customize Outlook views and Outlook forms with any .NET controls.

Screenshots gallery

  • Sample view regions in Outlook 2010
  • Sample view regions in Outlook 2003
  • Sample view regions in Outlook 2007

Regions for your existing VSTO projects

This solution effectively allows you to continue designing your Outlook solutions using Visual Studio Tools for Office in Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. In other words, even if you have an Outlook Add-in project developed with VSTO 3.0 or VSTO 2010, you can install Add-in Express Regions and immediately start taking advantage of our powerful Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions technology.

See related videos:

Outlook view and form regions - key features

Advanced Outlook Regions provide developers several unique advantages over the traditional Form Regions available in VSTO projects:

  • You can add regions to practically all Outlook windows
  • You can create form regions for Outlook Inspector windows and view regions for Outlook Explorer windows
  • Your regions work for all versions of Outlook from 2003 to 2010
  • Your regions are shared (multiple regions can share the same area with the ability to switch between them)
  • Your regions can be hidden and minimized
  • Your regions can be dragged between Outlook panes

Add-in Express helps developers write their code faster and better - one of our core philosophies. As such, Add-in Express Regions prominently features wizards for quickly creating your regions, associating them with Outlook windows and binding the regions to certain Outlook context.

"Add-in Express Regions" vs "Add-in Express for Office and .net"

Add-in Express Regions is a VSTO-specific implementation of the most popular technology included in Add-in Express for Office and .net, namely the Advanced Outlook Regions. Add-in Express for Office and .net allows creating version-neutral extensions for all Office applications (COM add-ins, smart tags, Excel RTD servers and XLLs), while Add-in Express Regions allows adding only advanced Outlook regions to any VSTO project, either a new or existing one.

See Also