Welcome to the Outlook 2010 Primary Interop Assembly Reference
The Microsoft Outlook 2010 Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) Reference provides help for developing managed applications for Outlook 2010. It extends the Outlook 2010 Developer Reference from the COM environment to the managed environment and focuses on how to use the PIA. It includes all the additions and changes to the object model in Outlook 2010, and provides many code samples in C# and Visual Basic to show how to perform common tasks in Outlook.
If you are new to developing solutions for Outlook, see Selecting an API or Technology for Developing Outlook Solutions to identify the APIs and technologies that are most appropriate for your needs.
Published: April 2010 | Updated: January 2012
Purpose of the Outlook PIA Reference
If you are just beginning to write add-ins for Outlook, you should first refer to the conceptual content in the Outlook 2010 Developer Reference. Even though the programming environment and accessing certain methods and connecting to events are different in COM and in managed development, features in the Outlook object model behave the same way in both COM and managed development. You can refer to the conceptual content in the Outlook 2010 Developer Reference to understand how to use the different features of the object model.
If you have a basic understanding of the Outlook object model and are learning to develop managed Outlook add-ins, see Setting Up to Use the Outlook PIA. For information about developing managed Microsoft Office solutions by using Microsoft Office development tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, see Office Development in Visual Studio. For information about how to program some basic Outlook tasks in both Visual Basic and C#, see Outlook Solutions. For more advanced code examples, see How Do I... in Outlook 2010 in this reference.
If you are already familiar with the Outlook object model, you have some experience writing managed applications, and you are using the Outlook PIA for the first time, start with Installing and Referencing the Outlook PIA and Architecture of the Outlook PIA.
Accessing the Outlook PIA Reference in Design Time
If you use Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office or Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and you are connected to the Internet, you can access context-sensitive Help when you press F1 in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). This Help content is the Outlook 2010 PIA Reference posted on MSDN.