John R. Durant's WebLog
Blog of "The" Office Developer
Migrating Word VBA Solutions to Visual Studio Tools for Office
Here is a great piece of work written by none other than Office Zealot kingpin, Chris Kuniki, on how...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/23/2004
VisualBlogger 2004 follows Microsoft Office style
In my never-ending quest to find a decent blog tool, I am giving VisualBlogger 2004 (beta 2) a...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/22/2004
Killer news and RSS Outlook combo
So, after I solved a proxy server issue, I was able to get NewsGator working again (after my machine...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/18/2004
Taking your Research Service for Microsoft Office Offline
If you have dreamed of creating your own Research Service and making data available offline, then...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/17/2004
Information Bridge Framework target audience
In recent blog entry, Charles Maxson asked the question about the target audience for IBF. Which...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/17/2004
Smart client tide is rising
If you have not heard the term "smart client", then get ready, because it is becoming increasingly...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/16/2004
Using documents as strongly typed data objects
One of the biggest challenges for developers who need to automate programs like Word, Excel,...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/15/2004
Information Bridge Framework and metadata
So, I took the plunge and have been working with the information bridge framework for a few days...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/08/2004
Environment variables save time
I have been doing some SharePoint development, and I am using a variety of little utilities to get...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/04/2004
WordProcessingML and Outlook
I promised that I had an article that would publish soon in which I consolidate the details I...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/02/2004
Smart Document Wrapper
When I first came to Microsoft (1 year and a couple of months ago), one of the first things I wanted...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 06/01/2004
MyTechEd.Day3.Title="WordProcessingML"
Yesterday was so busy, I failed to get the time to put up a blog entry. Anyway, here's what...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/28/2004
MyTechEd.Day2.Title="SmartTags"
My second day at TechEd was energizing. I met with a lot of people at the booth, and the Information...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/26/2004
MyTechEd.Day1.Title="The Gang's all here"
Coming to these shows is especially satisfying because it is like a family reunion. My old posse is...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/25/2004
FrontPage code snippets and Bilngual Translation Service
Just today, we pushed a couple of new items live on MSDN. The first...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/19/2004
SharePoint and GetUserCollectionFromSite
So, I'm messing around with the Windows SharePoint Services Web services it exposes. They are...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/13/2004
WordML and FAQ resources
On the internal DLs and NGs, I am finding that some people are wondering where to get good info and...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/12/2004
SharePoint sites and SharePointTracking
So, today I was trying to figure out how to alter or control the list of Workspaces that appear in...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/10/2004
Smart Tag List alii
Smart tag list files are one of the cleverest things to show up in Office, and I wish more...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 05/04/2004
Smart Tags, WordML, and a serious accident
Briefly, I was in a serious collision with a truck while training on my Trek 5200. I have some...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/29/2004
Developer Articles for PowerPoint
Andrew May, the programmer/writer for PowerPoint programmability at Microsoft, has two truly...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/12/2004
Microsoft Word - WordML table elements continued
OK- I had a few busy days as we hosted thousands of MVP's here for the 2004 MVP Summit. It was good...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/08/2004
My session at TechEd: BPR312
I'll be at TechEd in May, and I am presenting on Outlook. Those of you who have been to one of my...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/05/2004
Let's talk w:tbl!
In one of my earlier blog entries, I introduced some of the bread-and-butter XML element in the...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/05/2004
Excel Writer Library, a step in an interesting direction
Scott Watermasysk, brainsource of the truly excellent .Text ASP.NET Weblog technolgy, boosted my ego...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 04/01/2004
ReadPlease 2003
Some years ago, I was downloading books from Project Gutenburg. I had finished couple of Masters...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/31/2004
Use XML to Generate Excel 2003 Workbooks
When I say XML and Office 2003, the next words that come to the minds of most Office developers (who...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/30/2004
Smart Tag SDK Online
If you read my blog a few entries ago about what it takes to publish an SDK on MSDN, then you will...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/29/2004
Live Communications Server API
In an earlier blog I talked about how intrigued I was by Live Communications Server 2003. It is easy...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/29/2004
What it means to publish an SDK on MSDN
Coming to work here nearly a year ago, I already had an appreciation for SDKs. They are some of the...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/23/2004
The dichotomous identity of the InfoPath end-user
InfoPath is a truly interesting product. I have to be honest and say that prior to October of last...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/23/2004
Published on the Office Developer Center
We have a few new items on the ODC. First, we have an article about Excel and XML. Peter Vogel does...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/23/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the SIXTH of a short series
Well, I come to the end of this little series. In this entry, I will show you some of the XSL I...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/19/2004
Blogging and fresh air
Blogging has made the Web relevant for me again. I have to be honest: the Internet has become a bit...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/17/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the FIFTH of a short series
In this entry, I explain my manifest file (I'm getting a fair amount of email asking me to show this...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/17/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the FOURTH of a short series.
All right, it's time I quit answering email and get back to my blog (for those of you waiting for...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/15/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the THIRD of a short series.
So, in this entry, I wanted to explain the processing instruction that I included in my C# app that...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/05/2004
Just published on the Office Developer Center
Frank Rice has a new article out there for those interested in figuring out how to use VB.NET to...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 03/02/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the SECOND of a short series.
So, Outlook programming is not always hard, but you eventually end up in the world of MAPI...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/27/2004
Outlook, .NET, and WordML- the first of a short series.
If you are like me, you do not enjoy writing status reports to your manager. Fortunately, I have a...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/27/2004
Goodbye Balloon Tips, Hello Kelly Theriot
I was growing so weary of getting those Balloon Tips on my Tablet PC, and I searched high and low to...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/18/2004
Let's talk pPr
Look, I know that many of you have been messing with WordProcessingML (WordML) since beta, but I...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/18/2004
Sorting out Collaboration
Look, I work here, and I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by the number of products we product,...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/17/2004
alternate stylesheets and Word 2003
I have had a busy few days, hence the silence on my blog. I have been going through the initiation...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/17/2004
Way cool new content
We published a load of good stuff this week so far. Headlines will go live tomorrow. BTW: the answer...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/12/2004
Let's talk t, p, and r
So, now that I have decided to take my WordML skills to the next level it also affords me that...
Author: John R. Durant Date: 02/11/2004