New VSTO 3.0 and Office 2007 Book Hot off the Presses

I’m excited to announce that I have completed a new book on VSTO 2008 and Office 2007 that is hot off the presses.  I just got a copy in the mail and as my editor said, it’s a “big baby”, 1055 pages of VSTO 3.0 goodness.

This book was an interesting experience.  At first the publisher thought it would be just a “2nd edition” of the first VSTO book, but it quickly became clear that there was no way you could cover Office 2003 and Office 2007 development in the same book (so if you are doing Office 2003 development, the original books are still available).  It also became clear that there was just a ton of things that were new in Office 2007 and VSTO 3.0 that required a significant rewrite and a lot of new material.  So the result is a totally new book called “Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007”.

I’m going to be blogging in more detail in the next several weeks some of the major changes in Office 2007 and VSTO 3.0.  Also of note, the new book covers Visual Studio 2008 SP1 which adds some significant new features to VSTO.

Below is the cover copy that tells more about the book:

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007: VSTO for Excel, Word, and Outlook is the definitive book on VSTO 2008 programming, written by the inventors of the technology. VSTO is a set of tools that allows professional developers to use the full power of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework to program against Microsoft Office 2007.

This book delivers in one place all the information you need to succeed using VSTO to program against Word 2007, Excel 2007, and Outlook 2007, and provides the necessary background to customize Visio 2007, Publisher 2007, and PowerPoint 2007. It introduces the Office 2007 object models, covers the most commonly used objects in those object models, and will help you avoid the pitfalls caused by the COM origins of the Office object models. Developers who wish to program against Office 2003 should consult Carter and Lippert’s previous book, Visual Studio Tools for Office.

In VSTO 2008, you can build add-ins for all the major Office 2007 applications, build application-level custom task panes, customize the new Office Ribbon, modify Outlook’s user interface using Form Regions, and easily deploy everything you build using ClickOnce.

Carter and Lippert cover their subject matter with deft insight into the needs of .NET developers learning VSTO, based on the deep knowledge that comes from the authors’ unique perspective of living and breathing VSTO for the past six years. This book

  • Explains the architecture of Microsoft Office programming and introduces the object models

  • Covers the main ways Office applications are customized and extended

  • Explores the ways of customizing Excel, Word, and Outlook, and plumbs the depths of programming with their events and
    object models

  • Introduces the VSTO programming model

  • Teaches how to use Windows Forms and WPF in VSTO and how to work with the Document Actions Pane and application-level task panes

  • Delves into VSTO data programming and server data scenarios

  • Teaches ClickOnce VSTO deployment

This is the one book you need to succeed in programming against Office 2007.