John R. Durant's WebLog
Blog of "The" Office Developer
Excel XML Tools Released
Two of my buddies, Office Zealot kingpin Chris Kunicki and Excel zealot (and always colorful)...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/17/2005
Bookmark Confusion in Microsoft Word
One of my colleagues and I were messing around with Word bookmarks, doing some testing etc. We put...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/16/2005
Parameter Info text for Office in VS.NET
As a PM I need to have a broad yet also deep view of what we deliver. I find myself scrutinizing...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/09/2005
XPath- multiple criteria in a contains() expression
There are times when working on technical projects where you hit a roadblock. There is some...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/02/2005
Office 2003 Virtual Developer Labs Online
I've been meaning to make sure I gave this a plug for a few days, but it's been busy. We are working...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/28/2005
Visual Studio Tools for Office and SQL Server 2005 Beta 2
OK- I know I am behind. It's been a little nutty around here since boy #5 arrived (and I had to...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/21/2005
Another Microsoft Office Solutions Developer joins the ranks
I haven't blogged for a few days because my fifth son was born on Friday morning. I expect to be...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/18/2005
Office and my Tech Ed demos- sneak peak
I am perhaps a bit late with this one, but I was reading about the Acid2 test on slashdot. I need to...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/12/2005
Store Excel Formulas in SQL Server DB
Two of my colleagues, Sergei Gundorov and Clark Hamilton, have been busy, busy, busy. They did a...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/07/2005
Microsoft Office 2000 to Microsoft Office 2003 Migration Issues
As you know, I call a legacy system "One that works". That said, I am certainly not against...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/05/2005
.NET, Interop, and Office XML
I received a mail from Dino Chiesa (his last name means 'Church' in Italiano!) with a link to his...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/01/2005
Microsoft Word, AutoCaption, and land speed Vespa record
I was trying to figure out something with respect to AutoCaption in Word, and I found MakekTips, a...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/01/2005
Microsoft Office - 2 years - 3 moves
Today is my 2nd anniversary of working at Microsoft, all within the Office division. I like working...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/30/2005
SQL Server 2005, .NET Assemblies, and WordML
If you listened to the pod cast I did for Office Zealot last week, I was asked what kinds of...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/29/2005
Microsoft Office Pod Cast
Office Zealot is driving a lot of community involvment for Microsoft Office programmability. One of...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/28/2005
AJAX...I'm not going to mention it
OK- I wasn't going to mention it. I'm not sure why I didn't want to. Sure, the ABM crowd (Anything...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/24/2005
Migrating VBA code to Visual Studio Tools for Office
I am starting to realize that I need to post more than once a day. There's just so much going on....
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/23/2005
Office and Cycling are inseparable
So, I'm riding up the 520 this morning (taking it a little easy because I've had either a brutal...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/22/2005
Automating XML Maps in Excel 2003
As readers of my blog know, I am a huge supporter of the XML features in Word and Excel version...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/21/2005
Microsoft Office DevX Portal launches
This week we launched a new portal on DevX: Microsoft Office Professional Developer Portal. The DevX...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/18/2005
Office 2003 task pane discussion CONTINUES
NOTE: I am sorry that I couldn't update my blog for a few days. I still have proxy issues that...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/15/2005
Office sessions will be strong- register now
Tech·Ed 2005 is only 13 weeks away. It's in Orlando, and that means it's going to be a great time. I...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/10/2005
Task Pane Programming with Office 2003: Not "stupid, stupid, stupid"
On Jan 14 of this year a discriminating member of our audience on the Office Developer Center added...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/08/2005
Excel 2003: Infer XSD on XML Import
When you import XML data into Excel End-User: Data | XML | Import Code: ActiveWorkbook.XmlImport...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/23/2005
Microsoft Office Development- while you exercise!
I know- you can't stop thinking about developing for the Microsoft Office System. You wake up in the...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/22/2005
WordProcessingML and XSL-FO: too interesting to ignore
I was pleased to see that Oleg Tkachenko, XML luminary, picked up on our publishing of the XSL-FO...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/21/2005
WordProcessingML and the ISO 8601 Date
When I do a title like this, I want to include audio that does the dramatic organ sound, "Dah, dah,...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/21/2005
VSTO 2005 and Data Sources in Microsoft Office
Alright, I had typed up a nice blog entry when my Toshiba laptop (I have had tons of hardware...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/15/2005
VSTO 2005, Bookmarks and a Concerned Reader
Yesterday, I received feedback from a reader that the screen capture in the post for February 10th...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/11/2005
Microsoft Word, XML, and the hierarchical DataSet
I was finalizing some demos for an internal event here at Microsoft. We have an internal conference...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 01/18/2005
Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas- update
I am happy to announce that the update to the Office 2003 XML Reference is Schemas now live. What’s...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 01/14/2005
WordML and Lists Renumbering- Part II
OK- so in my last entry I described how the XML gets spelled out for the list. I also mentioned that...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 01/10/2005
WordProcessingML and Numbered Lists Restarting
I get a lot of questions about Word, XML, and how it all works. I get questions about other products...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 01/07/2005
Outlook and Added Intelligence with Anagram
I need to catch up on a couple of products that I have been reviewing. I am woefully late with this...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 01/04/2005
PINVOKE.NET Add-In for Visual Studio
While working on my little app to handle the character repeat setting on Windows XP, I came across...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 12/17/2004
Office 2003 Research Services and Amazon data
One of my friends, Charles Maxson, is a wizard of productivity solution development. He's also an...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 12/15/2004