Build enterprise-grade extensions for Microsoft Office 2000 - 2010. Add-in Express delivers you a set of solution templates, deployment scenarios, wizards, visual designers and components to create application-level Office add-ins, smart tags, RTD servers, Automation add-ins and XLLs.

Primary tabs

Version-Neutrality
You write one code base to support all Office versions
Visual Designers
You use visual designers instead of routine coding
Outlook-Specific Features
Additional functionality for your Outlook plugin development
Advanced Outlook Regions
Version-neutral View and Form Regions for Outlook 2000-2010
Easy Deployment
Deployment is so simple that you forget about it

Version-Neutrality

With support for version-neutrality there is no longer a need to create multiple version-specific projects. You simply create one project, one setup scenario and one code base that is compatible with all versions of Office. Furthermore, you are not limited to using the version-neutral Office interop assemblies that are based on the Office 2000 type library. Add-in Express offers selective version-neutrality, so you can specify the minimum version of Office that your extension will support. For example, you can choose to base your extension on Office 2003 or greater and your add-in will be supported under Office 2003, 2007 and 2010.

You select the minimum supported Office version – the corresponding interop assemblies will be used for your project

Visual Designers

Add-in Express includes many Office-specific components and classes developed especially to help you build solutions faster and more effectively. With the Add-in Express components and their visual designers you will never have to code the most common tasks such as:

  • Creating new or rebuilding existing toolbars and menus
  • Customizing the Ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar, Office Menu and Backstage View
  • Adding new keyboard shortcuts or intercepting built-in Office controls
  • Binding your toolbars, menus, tabs, regions, property pages to the context
  • Creating version-independent Outlook regions and Office task panes
  • Registering smart tag recognizers and real-time data topics

And much more...

In-place ribbon tab designer provides two ways to customize the Ribbon UI – through a scheme-sensitive tree-view and WYSIWYG

Outlook-Specific Features

Add-in Express encompasses and broadens much of the Outlook Object Model through its own Extensibility API and Outlook-specific components and classes, such as:

  • Explorer and Inspector "aware" toolbars and menus
  • Outlook-specific Fluent UI customization
  • Built-in task panes in Outlook 2007 and 2010
  • Version-neutral view and form regions
  • Solution modules in Outlook 2010
  • Option and property pages
  • Navigation pane shortcuts
  • Binding your UI to Outlook folders, content and context
  • Handling application, folder and item level events
Several Outlook-specific features are available through the Add New Item dialog box

Advanced Outlook Regions

Advanced View and Form Regions provided by Add-in Express allow Outlook developers to create additional regions for the Outlook Explorer and Inspector windows and embed custom .NET forms into Outlook panes. Unlike the built-in form regions introduced in Outlook 2007, with Add-in Express you can create regions that are:

  • Version-neutral; they work on Outlook 2000 - 2010
  • Shared  -  your regions may contain one or more forms created by one or several add-ins
  • Can be embedded into any Outlook forms as well as any Outlook views
  • Can be added to the Navigation pane, Folder view pane, Reading pane, To-Do bar, task pane docks, Outlook forms
  • Can be dragged between Outlook panes, hidden or minimized
  • Can be highlighted; if you need to draw the end-user’s attention, simply highlight your region
  • Can be bound to specified Outlook folders, content or context
Three sample Outlook 2010 view regions – at the bottom of the Navigation and Reading panes, and on the right task pane dock

Easy Deployment

Add-in Express provides the maximum flexibility for your installations by providing four base technologies to deploy your Office solutions, several installation types and deployment models:

  • Windows Installer based setup projects
  • ClickOnce deployment
  • Msi-based web-deployment
  • InstallShield setup projects
  • Per-user installations
  • Per-machine installations
  • Corporate deployment
  • Web-deployment
Add-in Express includes a feature-rich msi-based template for your setup projects