Eric White's Blog
Open XML, SharePoint, and Office
Excel Automation
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Automating the Excel client application brings the power of Excel to your applications.
- Understanding the Three Approaches to Office Development using VSTO
- Understanding the Architecture of Office 2010 Managed Add-Ins and Customizations
- Understanding the Difference between Custom Task Panes and Action Panes
- Comparing Excel Automation to Excel Services
When using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), there are three basic approaches to Office development: 1) Application-Level Managed Add-In, 2) Document-Level Customization, 3) Office Automation. (Article)
The most important technology for building Office applications is that of managed customizations (including application-level managed add-ins, and document-level customizations). Understanding the architecture and capabilities of managed customizations enables you to place the various developer technologies in context. (Article)
To the user, custom task panes and action panes have an identical appearance. Custom task panes and action panes consist of some screen real-estate that co-exists with the open document or spreadsheet within the Office client. This real-estate can be docked to the right, bottom, left, or right of the document or spreadsheet. It can also be a floating window. (Article)
In a previous post, I compared and contrasted Word Automation to Word Automation Services. There is a similar contrast between Excel Automation and Excel Services, although there is less overlap in functionality when compared to the two approaches for Word. (Article)