XL-Dennis's Blog

AddInSpy - The missing diagnostic tool!

2008-10-01T17:59:09Z

I thought that I should flag for the new diagnostic tool, AddInSpy, from MSFT. I have only started out to test it but I already like what I see. It can be a valuable source to detect present status for individual COM add-ins of all kind, i.e. managed, VSTO and unmanaged and provide a great number of values. The [...] Read More......(read more)

Everyone or Just Me?

2008-09-28T22:28:13Z

When we install new software we usually are given the options to either install it to “Everyone” or “Just Me”. Under normal conditions this is not an issue but suppose that we only want to install the software to either the person (”Just Me”) who installs it or to everyone who will be using the computer? In the first case, i.e. “Just Me”, it’s [...] Read More......(read more)

Learning LINQ

2008-09-28T22:27:55Z

At present my time table does not permit me to explore new things so I have postponed delving into some areas to the next year. However, in some cases I have made some research to get access to interesting sources and tools which I hope will help me out. LINQ is one area that is of high interest which may replace SQL within [...] Read More......(read more)

COM Shim Wizard Version 2.3.1 is released

2008-08-27T09:31:34Z

The version of the COM Shim Wizard that supports VS 2008 is finally available. The documentation seems to be the same as for the previously version, indicating that the update is only to make sure it works with VS 2008. In other words, it works with both VS 2005 and VS 2008. To download it You can use [...] Read More......(read more)

VS 2008, COM Add-ins and launch conditions

2008-07-31T09:49:29Z

I can create COM add-ins based on the Shared Add-in template in VS 2008 and they all work well on my developing computer. However, I got an issue when I tried to deploy them on configurations where only .NET Framework 2.0 is installed. In the New Project dialog we can select the targeting .NET Framework version, 2.0 [...] Read More......(read more)

VS 2008, Excel 2003 on Windows XP

2008-07-26T11:18:14Z

Recently I faced a situation where I created a managed COM add-in, based on the Shared Add-in template in VS 2008, which didn’t work at all. The configuration I work with is: Windows XP with SP-3 Office 2003 with SP-3 VS 2008 I had no issue to create the managed COM add-in but when I debugged it didn’t work as expected. All [...] Read More......(read more)

Some links to useful sources

2008-06-25T17:41:25Z

A new and time consuming project keeps me busy so at present I don’t have the time to post here on a regular basis. Anyway, the following links points to several recently published articles by MSFT. Finally, the version 1.0 of Open XML Format SDK is released. It provides us with new tools to interact with the XML [...] Read More......(read more)

Check which Excel version is installed

2008-04-27T14:31:38Z

Whenever I need some enviroment information I always tries to read the wanted values from Windows registry. In VB.NET this is as rather straightful process as we have access to the namespace “Microsoft.Win32′ which includes the class to work with the registry. Recently I had a need to find out if Excel is installed and if [...] Read More......(read more)

VB Snippet Editor

2008-04-13T11:57:20Z

Together with a lot of Intellisense improvements a large number of Code Snippets is also shipped with VB 2008. But what may be surprising is that there is no tool included to create and manage our own Code Snippets with. This is where VB Snippet Editor comes in. It gives us the option to develop our own snippets [...] Read More......(read more)

VSTO Power Tools

2008-02-22T16:32:35Z

Andrew Whitechapel announced yesterday that a new toolkit for VSTO and VSTA now is available for download. I will test most of the tools and review some of them here. For me these kinds of tools are very important as they can both save time during the development cycle and when troubleshooting targeting computers. What should be noted is the following: The toolkit [...] Read More......(read more)

Export data from DataGridView to Excel

2008-02-12T18:50:42Z

A common task is to view filtered data from databases in Windows applications where the users then can select records to be imported into Excel. In this context the main issue is usually how to achieve an acceptable performance when writing the selected data to Excel. When it comes to automation of Excel the communication between Excel and for [...] Read More......(read more)

Measure Data Quality

2008-01-28T19:33:09Z

Nowadays it’s a common task to retrieve data from databases and put the data into MS Excel. The acquired data is usually part of the information in decision processes. The data that is stored in databases are either collected automatically or manually. The process of collecting data manually can either be dictating or free. With ‘dictating’ I mean [...] Read More......(read more)

RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon - Review

2008-01-20T20:52:44Z

Title: RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon Authors: Robert Martin, Ken Puls, Teresa Henning (Oliver Stohr) Publisher: Wiley Year: 2007 Target group: According to me: Power user to professional VBA-developers Targeting softwares in the Office suite: Excel 2007, Word 2007 and Access 2007 Ranking: 7.5 (out of 10) Comments This book is the first of its kind as it explicit only target the RibbonX and how to manipulate and customize it. It covers how to [...] Read More......(read more)

Excel User Group

2008-01-10T11:14:45Z

Nick Hodge has recently set up a new peer-to-peer forum with Blogs, Forums and File areas for Excel users. For more information and member registration please see: Excel User Group What makes it attractive is that it has an Add-ins subforum: VSTO/COM/XLL Add-Ins This subforum will discuss and also be a Q&A forum for: COM Add-ins created with VSTO (and also about workbook level [...] Read More......(read more)

Excel 2003 & Windows Vista bug?

2007-12-26T19:56:43Z

Introduction After the release of .NET Co Library I immediately received some inputs indicating that the add-in does not work with Excel 2003 on Windows Vista. For some unknown reasons, at least for me, this configuration was not tested before I released the add-in. (It was tested on Windows Vista where Office 2003 and Office 2007 coexisted but not Office 2003 alone on Windows [...] Read More......(read more)