Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Hands-On Labs

These download provide hands-on practice with developing Microsoft Word and Excel solutions using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Beta 2:

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

How to Integrate Flash with Office 2003

How to Integrate Flash with Office 2003 Combine the analytical power of Office with the display slickness of Flash.
Managing Access Applications Inside an IT Organization

On Demand MS TechNet Webcast: Managing Access Applications Inside an IT Organization Developers and IT organizations face a multitude of challenges in maintaining a healthy Access database ecosystem. Join this session to review tools and strategies for managing shared database applications in multi-user environment. Also discussed are recommended usage scenarios for Access, and when to consider a move to SQL Server, including options available to help make for a successful migration.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Latest MS Office 2003 Resources

Office 2003 Add-In: International Character Toolbar This add-in enables you to insert international characters from 26 languages into Microsoft Office 2003 programs.

Using the Visual Studio Tools for Office Application Manifest Editor Learn about the application manifest and the process of building the Application Manifest Editor tool, as well as common deployment scenarios supported by this tool.
Creating XML Mappings in Excel 2003 Walk through common XML tasks in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 to learn more about the new XML functionality in Office 2003 Editions.
Microsoft Desktop Deployment Center

The Microsoft Desktop Deployment Center has loads of tools and resources for deploying Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003:
  • Choose and define your Office 2003 editions
  • Identify the upgrade issues
  • Create the installation point
  • Customize Office 2003 editions
  • Deploy and maintain Office 2003
  • Active Directory and Group Policy
  • Office 2003 Resource Kit
  • Microsoft Office Access 2003 Conversion Toolkit
  • Systems Management Server 2003 (Enterprise Only) Access
What's In Office 12?


What's next for Office? Microsoft VP Jeff Raikes addresses how the company is building solutions for the digital work style as it moves forward with the next version of Office, code-named "O12".

Thursday, June 23, 2005

A Better VBA Error-Handler

Today I came across something extremely interesting.

In an article by Mike Groh, editor of Access VBA Editor magazine, excerpted in an on-line teaser at VBA Error-Handling Basics, there is an intriguing piece of VBA code put forward as an example of effective error-handling (the interesting bit is bolded):

Public Sub MyProc()
On Error GoTo HandleError
1000
'A guaranteed error:
2000
Debug.Print 1 / 0
ExitHere:
Exit Sub
HandleError:
Call LogError( _
plngNumber:=Err.Number, _
pstrDescription:=Err.Description, _
pstrModuleName:="ThisModuleName, _
pstrProcedureName:="MyProc", _
plngLineNumber:=Erl)
Resume ExitHere
End Sub


The constant Erl returns the line number in the procedure where the error occurs, but as I discovered after playing around with the code in Access 2000, only if line numbers exist in the procedure. I revised the procedure to:

Public Sub MyProc()
10 On Error GoTo HandleError
'A guaranteed error:
20 Debug.Print 1 / 0


ExitHere:
30 Exit Sub

HandleError:

40 Debug.Print "Error No: " & Err.Number
50 Debug.Print "Error Description: " & Err.Description
60 Debug.Print "Error from Line No: " & Erl

70 Resume ExitHere

End Sub

which returns:

Error No: 11
Error Description: Division by zero
Error from Line No: 20

in the Immediate Window.

So you now have an error-handler that returns the line number in which the error occurred!

Implementing this technique in your VBA applications, new AND existing, is easy using a great freeware Office VBA Editor add-in, MZ-Tools 3.0 VBA , which adds line numbering to a procedure in two mouse-clicks.


Why Switch from VBA Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 (VSTO)?

Nine Compelling Reasons to Move from VBA to VSTO 2005 from TechRepublic.com. Nine "solid" reasons for giving Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 a closer look?
Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 Service Pack 5 Now Available

Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5) The Microsoft® XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 SP5 release offers a number of security fixes and bug fixes over the previous MSXML 3.0 SP releases. You can also download the MSXML 3.0 SDK from this page.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

MS Office Interoperability

This article is an excerpt from Microsoft .NET Development for Microsoft Office, from Microsoft Press (ISBN 0-7356-2132-2, copyright Microsoft Press 2005, all rights reserved):
  • Chapter 2, Part 1: Discusses managed interop assemblies for Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2003, and illustrates some basic interop projects with Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
  • Chapter 2, Part 2: Discusses Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Office interop wizards, explains interface/class ambiguity in Microsoft C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, and explains how to release COM objects by using simple garbage collection, the ReleaseCOMObject method, and AppDomain unloading.
  • Chapter 2, Part 3: Compares Visual Basic .NET and C#, and illustrates debugging interop solutions. Also includes a summary of the entire chapter.
  • Download sample code

Monday, June 20, 2005

Latest MS Office Downloads

Download: Use InfoPath 2003 to give your office applications access to production data An overview of InfoPath's capabilities for better enterprise-wide communication from techrepublic.com.

Create Your Own Symbol Sets for the Office 2003 International Character Toolbar Add-In

Microsoft Component Installer Software Development Kit for Windows (MCISDK)
Latest MS Access On-Demand Webcasts from Microsoft
The deal on the new MS Office XML Schemas

Microsoft Office 2003, XML Reference Schemas The deal on the new Office 12 XML file formats. For more details, see the Microsoft Office XML page.

Friday, June 17, 2005

Latest MS Access KB Articles

896906 ACC2000 FIX: You receive an ODBC error message when you run a pass-through query in Office Access to import data from an Oracle database into Office Excel

898789 ACC2002 The Script Editor unexpectedly quits when you use the Script Editor for the first time in an Office program

897764 ACC2002 You may receive a "The Visual Basic for Applications project in the database is corrupt" error message when you try to open an object that is in a compiled database or in a compiled project in Access 2002, in Access 2002 SP1, or in Access 2002 SP2

897764 ACC2002 You may receive a "The Visual Basic for Applications project in the database is corrupt" error message when you try to open an object that is in a compiled database or in a compiled project in Access 2002, in Access 2002 SP1, or in Access 2002 SP2

898058 ACC2003 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix package: April 28, 2005

898072 ACC2003 Description of the Access 2003 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix package: April 28, 2005

899361 ACC2003 The "Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)" white paper for Microsoft Office 2003 is available

898070 ACC2003 Description of the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components post-Service Pack 1 hotfix package: April 28, 2005

899414 ACC2003 Description of the Office XP Post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package: May 20, 2005

899600 ACC2003 Text that uses umlaut characters may not correctly import in Office Access 2003

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Latest MS Access Resources

Smart Access: How to Tame the Crosstab Missing Column Beast How you can ensure that your data-driven crosstab reports in MS Access can work reliably.

Office 2003 Editions: Access VBA Language Reference This download contains the Microsoft Office Access 2003 Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Language Reference as a compiled Help file (6/6/2005).
More Articles on Migrating Excel VBA Applications to Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office

Migrating a VBA Excel Application to Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office This download contains two versions of an IIS Log Analyzer tool: a VBA version and a Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Beta 2 version.

Migrating Excel VBA Solutions to Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Convert solutions from Visual Basic for Applications to Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office and Visual Basic 2005.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Outlook Add-in Support in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office

Introducing Outlook Add-in Support for Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Outlook add-in support simplifies interaction with the host application and provides a cleaner event framework for creating add-ins along with streamlined security.

Creating an Outlook Task Add-in Solution with Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Using new Outlook add-in support in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System to create Word 2003 task reports using WordProcessingML and XML expansion packs and a context menu for tasks in Outlook.

Architecture of the Outlook Add-in Support in Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Learn about new support for managed add-ins in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, introduced with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Word 2003: Build an App with VB.NET

Word 2003 Sample: Creating a Search Application with Visual Basic .NET Download this sample to create a simple application in Visual Basic .NET that searches a database and uses the results to populate a Word document using XML tags or bookmarks.
Visual Studio Tools for Office: All About Outlook

Webcast: New features features for Office Developers

MSDN Webcast: Overview of Visual Studio Tools for Office, Version 2005 Reviews new features that enable developers to construct business solutions using Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Office.
More On Office 12 and the Open XML File Format

Microsoft Chooses Native XML File Format as Default in Office 12 The Office 12 Open XML will give enterprises the choice of XML or binary format. Is it the beginning of the end for proprietary closed Office file formats?

Thursday, June 02, 2005

XML File Format for Office 12 files


Microsoft adding XML file formats to Office 12 XML-based file formats for Excel, PowerPoint and Word in Office 12 are expected to free up data and improve security. The new files will be compatible with existing documents, and a free downloadable "converter" will allows users of Office 2000 and later to work with the new formats. Users will have the option to not use the new files in Office 12, but the XML formats will be set as defaults in the three applications when the package ships, sometime in the second half of 2006.
Create an MS Access/Word Application using VB.NET

Word 2003 Sample: Creating a Search Application with Visual Basic .NET This code sample accompanies the MSDN article "Creating a Search Application with Word 2003 and Visual Basic .NET". The sample application searches an Access database and uses the results to populate a Word document using both XML tags and bookmarks. The article also provides some background on data access technologies in the .NET Framework.