Controls on Office Documents

Applies to
The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office. Document-level projects Excel 2003 Excel 2007 Word 2003 Word 2007 Application-level projects Excel 2007 Word 2007 For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

Visual Studio Tools for Office supports Windows Forms controls and host controls. Host controls are objects in the Microsoft Office application to which Visual Studio Tools for Office adds additional programming features.

When you develop document-level projects for Excel or Word, you can use the Visual Studio designer to add these controls to the document or workbook in your project at design time, or you can programmatically add these controls at run time.

Starting in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1), when you develop application-level projects for Excel or Word, you can programmatically add these controls to any open document or workbook at run time.

In This Section

• Host Items and Host Controls Overview
  Describes the functionality of host items and host controls, including programming against events, binding the controls to data, and how the controls differ from the native objects.

• Programmatic Limitations of Host Items and Host Controls
  Describes the issues that you might encounter when you use host items and host controls in code.

• Windows Forms Controls on Office Documents Overview
  Provides information about using Windows Forms controls on Excel and Word documents and how they differ from controls on a Windows Form.

• Adding Controls to Office Documents at Run Time
  Describes how to add Windows Forms controls and host controls to Word and Excel documents, and describes limitations about how these controls persist in the document.

Related Sections

• Office UI Customization
  Provides information about different ways to customize the UI of Microsoft Office applications by using Visual Studio Tools for Office.

• Binding Data to Controls in Office Solutions
  Describes how you can display data in Word and Excel documents by binding the data to host controls within the document.

Change History

Date	History	Reason
July 2008	Added information about adding controls to documents by using application-level add-ins.	SP1 feature change.