Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Second Edition Beta

Whow, that is a mouthfull, isn't it ... It seems that there now is a separate Office Developer Center for the VSTO 2005 SE Beta  - VSTO 2005 SE is specifically targetted at developing with the Office 2007 clients but there are some enhancements for Office 2003 development as well.  The previous version of this beta, was called Cypress - another important thing to know that this is not VSTO "v3" since VSTO "V3" will only be available in the Orcas timeframe. For some more detailed information, take a look at this posting from the Release Program Manager for VSTO

There are two articles which I strongly recommend, you should take a look at - Get a hands on introduction to VSTO 2005 SE and An Inside Look at VSTO 2005 SE Design

Some new features in VSTO 2005 SE:

• Managed code application-level add-ins for some of the most popular Office applications: Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio.
• Programming model and runtime support for key Office 2007 features including the ribbon, custom task panes, and Outlook form regions.
• Design-time support for InfoPath 2007 form templates.
• Compatibility and maintainability assurances. The VSTO 2005 SE Beta assures that the applications you’ve built on Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 continue to run with the 2007 Office system.
• Support for more versions of Visual Studio 2005. VSTO 2005 SE Beta now runs in Visual Studio 2005 Professional (stand-alone), in addition to those versions already supported, including all of the MSDN subscriptions and Visual Studio Team System.

You can download VSTO 2005 SE here - but take a look at the installation notes, there are some things you should watch out for:

• Make sure you only have one version of Office installed
• Completely remove previous versions of VSTO v3 CTPs

tags: office2007, vsto, vsto2005, office