Managed reference (Office development in Visual Studio)
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
This section contains API reference documentation for namespaces and types that are used in Office projects that target the .NET Framework 4 or the .NET Framework 4.5. For API reference documentation about the namespaces and types that are used in Office projects that target the .NET Framework 3.5, see the following reference section in the Visual Studio documentation: Managed reference (Office development in Visual Studio).
Note
Interested in developing solutions that extend the Office experience across multiple platforms? Check out the new Office Add-ins model. Office Add-ins have a small footprint compared to VSTO Add-ins and solutions, and you can build them by using almost any web programming technology, such as HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, and XML.
In this section
Contains classes common to programming Office solutions. These include the base class for VSTO Add-ins, classes for creating custom task panes in VSTO Add-ins, classes for creating smart tags in Excel and Word solutions, and classes for creating actions panes in document-level customizations.
Contains host controls and host items that can be used in solutions for Excel.
Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Controls
Contains Excel controls and Windows Forms controls that can be used in solutions for Excel.
Microsoft.Office.Tools.Outlook
Contains classes used by VSTO Add-ins for Outlook, including classes that are used to create custom form regions.
Contains classes that are used to programmatically modify Ribbon customizations created by using the Ribbon designer.
Contains host controls and host items that can be used in solutions for Word.
Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Controls
Contains Word controls and Windows Forms controls that can be used in solutions for Word.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications
Contains the ServerDocument class and a set of related cached data classes. These classes can be used to modify some aspects of document-level customizations on computers that do not have Microsoft Office installed.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Deployment
Contains the IAddInPostDeploymentAction interface (which you can implement to create a post deployment action for an Office solution), exceptions that can be thrown when installing an Office solution, and other APIs that are part of the Visual Studio infrastructure.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime
Contains most of the exceptions that can be thrown by the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime, several classes that can be used to cache data in document-level customizations, and other APIs that are part of the Visual Studio infrastructure.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks
Contains MSBuild task classes that are used to build Office projects.