It's all about the beta baby!

Well, we did it--we finished beta 1 of VSTO 2.0 (aka VSTO 2005). And it can now be yours for the price of shipping and handling.

What's in the Beta

To quote Andrew Whitechapel who is presenting on VSTO 2005 at Tech Ed Europe this week, “There are so many new features in VSTO-2005, in terms of view/data design separation, new IDE development tools, new VSTO libraries, enhanced security/deployment model, embedded application manifests, databinding, new view controls, the managed ActionsPane, disconnected and server-side document processing, and on and on.“

I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised at what VSTO 2005 can do.

Getting the Beta

Here's what you do: Go to https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/default.aspx#vs2005 and click on the Visual Studio 2005 Beta link. You can then read instructions on how to order the beta. (If the link is not yet live, check back in a couple of days.)

Once you have installed the beta, please read the ReadMe for late breaking changes. Please note that you must have Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 in order to use the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Beta.

MSDN Subscribers can download both Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and Whidbey Beta 1 from https://www.msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/. You must download the Visual Studio 2005 Beta full version in order to obtain the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 beta. Note that Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Beta is not included any of the Visual Studio Express versions.

Before you continue, it is important to understand that the beta release of any product will not display the stability of a shipped Microsoft product. You may encounter problems with Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005, which could possibly result in a loss or destruction of data. This release is not appropriate for production use, and we suggest that you back up your existing data before you install and run this software.

 

Talking back to us about the Beta

 

Please post any questions you may have on our public newsgroup, Microsoft.Public.VSNET.VSTools.Office, and submit bugs and suggestions on the MSDN Product Feedback Center - https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback