Visual Studio Office Development (VSOD) Support Team
Office VBA: Reference downgrade problem
In the world of Office VBA programming, many a times there is a need to automate other Office...
Date: 01/23/2017
Considerations while reading/writing registry keys under HKLM from Office Addin in Office Click-to-Run
An add-in running on Click-to-Run (C2R) version of Office (Office 365), which creates custom...
Date: 12/09/2016
VSTO Add-in may fail to load if signed by some SHA256 certificates [Update : Fixed with latest VSTO runtime]
Symptom VSTO add-in may fail to load if all of the following conditions are true:- The SHA256...
Date: 01/28/2016
Considerations for common performance issues with Office Add-ins and Macros in Office 2013
The intent of this blog post is to address frequent questions that we see comparing performance...
Date: 09/28/2015
After installing MS15-022 update you may not be able to run HTML script under Office context
Symptom After installing MS15-022 update you may not be able to run HTML script under Office context...
Date: 05/13/2015
Using MSBUILD through command line or from TFS Server to compile VSTO projects may fail with error 'The "SignFile" task could not be initialized with its input parameters'
Symptom You may get the following errors if you try to compile VSTO Projects through MSBUILD through...
Date: 02/10/2015
ActiveProject.CustomDocumentProperties may return ‘null’ for Applications Compiled using Visual Studio 2010 C# express edition
Few days back I worked on an issue where an application compiled using Visual Studio 2010 C# Express...
Date: 05/15/2014
Office automation through VC++ using MFC Class from TypeLib results into large number of compilation errors
When trying to Automate Excel, Word, etc using VC++ (MFC based application) in Visual Studio 2010 we...
Date: 06/04/2013
Customizing Office 2013 backstage
Office 2013 introduced many changes to the backstage. In this blog post we will see how Office 2013...
Date: 04/05/2013
VB6 based add-ins may fail to work in Office 2013
VB6 based add-ins have a dependency on the Add-In Designer Object Library (msaddndr.dll), which is...
Date: 11/21/2012
Considerations for using Dsofile on 64 bit OS
This post is by Yeshwanth Channaraj. There is a well-documented sample program, DSOFile, that...
Date: 10/19/2012
Troubleshooting common VSTO issues – Part 2
In this blog post we will talk about some common errors related to VSTO 3.0 and 4.0. For VSTO 2.0...
Date: 10/08/2012
Troubleshooting common VSTO issues – Part 1
This blog post talks about the common issues related to the VSTO customization failure errors and...
Date: 09/17/2012
You may encounter multiple errors while performing large number of object model calls from a VSTO 3.0 Excel add-in
Suppose you have a VSTO 3.0 add-in for Excel, which performs some Excel object model calls. You...
Date: 08/14/2012
ArgumentOutOfRange exception when using WPF controls in a Project 2010 add-in.
You may see "ArgumentOutOfRange" exception for no apparent reason when using WPF controls in...
Date: 07/31/2012
How to set duplex printing for Microsoft Word Automation clients in C#, VB.Net
Microsoft Word Automation clients cannot set the duplex print flag before a print job starts in...
Date: 05/18/2012
Resolving performance issues with loading Office add-ins (VSTO add-ins or Shared add-ins)
Many Office developers report performance issues with loading Office add-ins (VSTO add-ins or Shared...
Date: 05/18/2012
How to create a document from a template (dotx, dotm) and attach to it using Open XML SDK
One of the needs to use Open XML SDK is to create documents on server side. In case of Open XML, it...
Date: 02/17/2012
Presentation.Saved property in PowerPoint returns false for a new, un-modified presentation
Suppose you are developing a PowerPoint add-in and want to use the PresentationCloseEvent to present...
Date: 02/14/2012
Word 2007 Bug: Accessing content controls having ID more than 2^31 results in an error.
Few days back I worked on an issue where a Word 2007 VSTO document solution, developed using VSTO...
Date: 11/01/2011
Excel RTD Caching–Memory usage
Microsoft Office Excel provides a worksheet function, RealTimeData (RTD). This function...
Date: 09/30/2011
Excel xml file behaves differently when opened in 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Internet Explorer
Issue: Suppose you have an Excel XML file and you try to open it in inside an Internet Explorer 32...
Date: 06/20/2011
VSTO 4.0 SP1 will cause a VSTO Addin to not find its config file.
Few days back i worked on a problem where a VSTO addin was failing to load after VSTO 4.0 SP1 was...
Date: 06/14/2011
Smart tags built using Visual Basic 6 don't work with Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010.
Recently I worked on a problem where the Visual Basic 6 (VB6) Smart tags were not working...
Date: 09/03/2010
How to efficiently generate OpenXML Workbook from Excel files containing very large amount of data
Few days back, one of my colleague asked me for my help for a requirement to convert an Excel...
Date: 05/31/2010
How to retain alternate data stream associated with a word document while converting it to newer file format version
Recently I encountered a not so common [;-)] scenario while working with Word 2007: If you have a...
Date: 04/13/2010
Using shortcut keys to call a function in an Office Add-in
Recently I came across a problem where a customer was looking for the ways to call a function in an...
Date: 04/08/2010
How to implement late bound event handling in case of a VSTO Add-In
If you build a managed component that loads into Office application’s(Word, Excel , PowerPoint)...
Date: 04/07/2010
How to set the editing restrictions in Word using Open XML SDK 2.0
Recently I worked on a scenario where customer wanted to set the Document Editing Restrictions in...
Date: 04/05/2010
How to Delete a Worksheet from Excel using Open XML SDK 2.0
Update (8 Feb 2013):- The sample code has been fixed for issues where it did not correctly delete...
Date: 02/05/2010
“HeaderFooter (unknown member) : Invalid request.” Error, while setting slide footer text in PowerPoint 2007 via .Net
Symptoms: While programming PowerPoint 2007 in .Net, when you try setting Footer text for slides,...
Date: 12/31/2009
Excel: How do you implement Application_Quit event in Excel – In External automation scenario
You may have come across this blog which demonstrates how you can capture Excel’s quit event from an...
Date: 12/31/2009
Word 2007: Customizing Document inspector leaves instance of Word open in the memory.
Symptoms: If you have customized Document inspector for Word 2007 using IDocumentInspector...
Date: 12/28/2009
Excel 2007, WPF: Events are not fired for items that overlap Excel UI for WPF context Menus
Symptoms: Consider a scenario where you have a VSTO 3.0 add-in for Excel 2007 that loads up a WPF...
Date: 12/16/2009
Excel 2007: Ribbon tabs (TabAddIns) disappear from doc level customizations if user opens and closes a doc running in the same instance of Excel
Symptoms: Consider a scenario where you have developed a Document level customization for Excel 2007...
Date: 12/15/2009
How to loop through the app-domains in the current process
Consider a scenario where we have a VSTO add-in and an automation add-in for Excel and we want to...
Date: 11/30/2009
Excel: How do you use RefEdit/range selection control to select a cell range using .Net
In Excel VBA, we could use RefEdit control on a user form for allowing users to select a cell range...
Date: 10/02/2009
Excel: How do you implement Application_Quit event in Excel/how do you intercept Excel application Quit
We know Word Object model provides an event handler called Application_Quit, which will be triggered...
Date: 10/02/2009
Excel: How to run C# code behind with a click of a button on a Worksheet, without VBA code
OLE object controls such as Command button, Checkbox, etc., allow us to call VBA code behind using...
Date: 10/02/2009
Word: How to do “Drag and Drop” of Content controls from Task Pane to the document
Create a Word VSTO application level project for Word using Visual Studio 2008/2005 (For VS 2005,...
Date: 10/02/2009
Issue: Change in behavior from Office 2007 RTM to SP2 when Sheet.Unprotect is called
Let’s say you have a password protected Excel workbook, and you are calling following function...
Date: 09/11/2009
Issue: Formatting individual characters of Data Labels of Charts programmatically in Excel 2007 SP2
If you are working with Charts programmatically in Excel 2007 Service Pack 2, and are trying to set...
Date: 09/11/2009
WORD 2003/EXCEL 2003: VSTO Customization added using ServerDocument.AddCustomization method does not add customization if your document contained an embedded VSTO customized Document/WorkBook
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION Consider this scenario. You are adding VSTO customizations dynamically to Word...
Date: 06/30/2009
Presentation Close event is incorrectly fired while issuing Presentation Print Command
Summary When the print command of a PowerPoint Presentation is issued, the presentation.close event...
Date: 06/29/2009
How to Sign the SignatureLine using Office Open XML
Introduction We can use PackageDigitalSignatureManager class available in System.IO.Packaging...
Date: 06/19/2009
MapPoint does not appear in the list of products while creating shared add-in in Visual Studio 2008
Issue Description: On a machine having Visual Studio 2008 and MapPoint 2009 installed, MapPoint does...
Date: 06/18/2009
Creating charts in Word and PowerPoint using newly introduced Object Model in Office 2007 Service Pack 2
Office 2007 SP2 has added a major inclusion to the Object Models of Word and PowerPoint, i.e.,...
Date: 06/15/2009
Visual Basic 6 Controls stop working after Security Advisory 960715
Summary of the issue: After installing security advisory 960715 and opening a workbook with one of...
Date: 06/04/2009
How to merge two or more Word 2003 or Word 2007 XML documents into one Word 2007 XML document.
Here are the steps to merge the documents. Step 1: Open a new Microsoft Word 2007 document and type...
Date: 04/13/2009