Posts Tagged ‘Outlook’

Outlook 2013 add-in development for beginners: Outlook Application & base objects

Working with a new framework takes time as you familiarize yourself with its architecture and best practices. You have to spend time discovering objects, learning what they do, and when it is best to utilize them. For Outlook add-in development (and Microsoft Office development in general), this task can take months due to the number of objects involved... Read the rest of this entry →

Outlook Object Model: 4 things developers might not know

Today, I will cover 4 topics of Outlook development tasks that are not commonly known or mainstream. You can argue about how well known each task is but you will lose. These tasks are not commonly known because you don't always need them. They are beyond the basics. But, if you master them, you can look upon other Outlook developer with a snooty little smirk... Read the rest of this entry →

Outlook 2013 add-ins and Visual Studio 2012: Getting started for VSTO developers

Today we'll focus on how developers, coming from a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) background, can get started developing add-ins for Outlook 2013 using Add-in Express and Visual Studio 2012 (C#, VB.NET or C++.NET).... Read the rest of this entry →

How to preserve the ribbon control state (or, if you develop custom Outlook ribbons…)

If you decide to build an Outlook add-in, you're going to want to customize the user interface. If you start customizing the Outlook user interface, you'll probably build a custom ribbon. If you build a custom Outlook ribbon, you'll want to put some controls on it like a button that toggles, a checkbox, and a drop down control ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to dynamically bind Outlook add-in UI elements to the context

Something that I've noticed is that if you want to really start bending Microsoft Outlook to your programming will, you need to start embracing and combining the use of message classes and content types when developing Outlook add-ins... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating custom Outlook forms in C#, VB.NET: Outlook 2013 and 2010 form examples

Part of the allure of customizing or even adding your entire application inside Outlook is the ability to add your own .Net forms inside the Outlook Explorer and Inspector windows. In this article I'll show you how easy it is to create your own custom Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010 forms using Add-in Express for Office and .net... Read the rest of this entry →

Customizing Outlook 2010 and 2013 Ribbon tabs, buttons, groups: C#, VB.NET

The Ribbon revolutionized the Office user interface when originally introduced in Office 2007. Using Visual Studio's out-of-the-box tools, you can build custom Ribbon's for your solutions. BUT… Microsoft provides visual designers for a small subset of ribbon controls. Meaning, you will need to write lots of XML to complete your customization ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to create custom Outlook rules and execute them programmatically: C# example

The Microsoft Outlook Rules is a very powerful feature that can sometimes get lost amongst the myriad other features and abilities of Outlook. Many Outlook programmers do not realise that Microsoft introduced a new rules object model in Outlook 2007 allowing developers to harness the power of Outlook rules... Read the rest of this entry →

How to replace built-in Outlook dialogs with custom forms

Years ago I found this article by Helmut Obertanner on CodeProject. In this article Helmut explains how you can replace the built-in Outlook Address book dialog with your own form. I was amazed and intrigued! This approach is a great way to provide your users with a custom address form that is able to retrieve contact address information from literally any source e.g. CRM or customer database... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating modular Office add-ins using Add-in Express

When creating a new Office extension with Add-in Express for Office and .net you have the option to design your entire add-in user interface using our visual designers, by simply dropping the various components on the design surface of the AddinModule. This is fine for most Office add-ins especially when you do not require a […]... Read the rest of this entry →

Creating an Outlook Mail App in Visual Studio 2012

It's time to stop messing around and take the Office web app model for a spin. In this article, I'll show you how to create a simple but useful Outlook Mail App that lets you attach notes to mail items... Read the rest of this entry →

Create custom Outlook menus: VB.NET and C# for Outlook 2013-2003

It looks like Microsoft is going to go ahead and release Office 2013 sooner rather than later. I suppose you can argue they already have with the recent pre-ordering of Windows Surface (which comes with Office 2013 RT). Whether or not you consider Office 2013 RT to really be Office is up to you. It can be your opinion ... Read the rest of this entry →

How to avoid “Outlook detected a problem with an add-in”. Tips & tricks for Office 2013 developers

If you've read my last article, you would've seen I mentioned that Outlook 2013 has become a lot stricter when checking add-in performance for such metrics as add-in start-up, shutdown, item open and folder switching. If you do have a few misbehaving plug-ins, you might also have seen this new information bar when starting Outlook 2013 "A problem was detected with an add-in and it has been disabled" ... Read the rest of this entry →

What’s new in Outlook 2013 for Microsoft Office developers

The new Office brought with it some mayor changes and we've been focusing on the biggest change: the new app framework. But, Apps for Office is not the only new feature, Outlook 2013 Preview brings with it the following important changes... Read the rest of this entry →

UX guidelines to create Outlook 2013 mail apps

In my last article we've taken a hands-on approach on some UX guidelines for Office 2013 Content and Task Pane Apps, in today's article we'll take the same approach but focus on Mail apps for Outlook 2013 ... Read the rest of this entry →

Outlook 2013 development & customization: 7 questions developers should ask

What are Mail Apps and why would I build one? Okay, first off, this is two questions rolled into one. So technically, you are already getting a deal from today's newswire… 8 questions for the price of 7. With that in mind, let's continue. ... Read the rest of this entry →

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