Office Solutions in Visual Studio 2005

In a word- SIMPLE. I tried to write an add-in once. and only once. Now it looks like the task is made considerably simpler with Visual Studio 2005 (so long as your running Office 2003). The object model and intellitype supports simply the add-ins, and the number of methods to support are greatly reduced. Even adding items to the Action Bar has become simple. I ran the lab on this one as well- and it really is simple. Word, Excel, and Infopath are supported- and support for Outlook is supported as an add-in. Unfortunately, Outlook is still a bit convoluted- primarily for lack of a simple well layed out object model- but if the developers have their way an improved exchange model is in the works in the future.

Named ranges in Excel are easily referenced though a drag-and-drop type interface.
Bookmarks in Word are also easily referenced- and using the drag and drop item- when text is placed into a bookmark- THE BOOKMARK IS NOT DESTROYED! About Damn time!

Eric Carter's blog appears to be THE place to get info on VSTO. Check it out, here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_carter/