Get started (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 topics that help you get started using the Microsoft Office developer tools 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

• Office solutions development overview (VSTO)

Provides background information for developing Office solutions in Visual Studio.

• Changes to the design of Office projects that target the .NET Framework 4 or the .NET Framework 4.5

Describes the new design of Office projects that target the .NET Framework 4 or later, and lists breaking changes to code in Office projects that you migrate to the .NET Framework 4 or later.

• Features available by Office application and project type

Describes which applications and projects are required to use Office development features such as Ribbon extensibility, custom task panes, actions panes, and form regions.

• Configure a computer to develop Office solutions

Provides information and steps for installing the Office development tools, the runtime that enables Office solutions to run on end-user computers, and the Office primary interop assemblies.

• Get started program document-level customizations for Excel

Provides a summary of the important concepts needed to use Visual Studio to create document-level customizations for Excel.

• Get started programming document-level customizations for Word

Provides a summary of the important concepts needed to use Visual Studio to create document-level customizations for Word.

• Get started programming VSTO Add-ins

Provides a summary of the important concepts needed to use Visual Studio to create application-level Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Add-ins for Microsoft Office applications.

• VBA and Office solutions in Visual Studio compared

Describes the relative strengths of Visual Basic for Applications and the Office development tools in Visual Studio for developing Office solutions.

• Common tasks in Office programming

Provides links to topics that can help solve common problems.

Related sections

• Office development samples and walkthroughs

Provides links to sample applications and topics that give step-by-step instructions for performing common tasks.

• Architecture of Office solutions in Visual Studio

Describes the components of Office solutions and how they work at design time and runtime.

• Design and create Office solutions

Provides information about how to create an Office project and configure your project in Visual Studio.

• Develop Office solutions

Provides information about how to implement code and user interface customizations in an Office project.

• Secure Office solutions

Provides information about security requirements for Office solutions.

• Deploy an Office solution

Provides information about how to make Office solutions available to your users, and describes the major issues to consider when you choose a deployment method and set security.

• Visual Studio Tools for Office technical articles and Visual How Tos Contains links into videos and technical articles about Office solutions created by using Visual Studio.