Pulling It All Together

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

The programmability features of Microsoft Office have always provided developers with powerful tools they can use to modify and integrate Office applications into custom solutions that extend the functionality of Office. With the new tools and technologies in Office 2000, you have more power than ever before to take advantage of the Office platform and extend Office functionality from the desktop to the Web.

All of these features give you many options for developing the right strategy for designing, building, and deploying your custom solution (see Chapter 2, "Designing and Deploying Office Solutions," for more details about designing your custom solutions). Every possible direction has both benefits and limitations. It will be your strengths and abilities, the needs of your users, and the power of your development environment that will determine how you deliver your services to customers.

The Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide is designed to help you get where you need to go now. But there is much more here if you want to take advantage of it. This book not only answers specific questions, it provides code samples that illustrate how to use all Office technologies. In addition, it tells you how to design and build procedures, modules, objects, and solutions in a way that makes them robust, easy to maintain and update, and easy to reuse in other solutions you may build.