Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Brief Description

Install VSTO 2005 SE to create new application-level add-ins for six applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system and five in Microsoft Office 2003. Use managed code to customize task panes and the Ribbon in the 2007 Microsoft Office system applications.

Overview

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (also known as “Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition” or “VSTO 2005 SE”) is an add-on to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that enables you to build application-level add-ins for applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Microsoft Office 2003 System.

VSTO 2005 SE includes support for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 form template projects, previously available as a separate product known as the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio 2005. You can now design InfoPath 2007 form solutions right in the Visual Studio 2005 environment if you have InfoPath 2007 installed on your computer.

Feature highlights:

Application-level add-in projects for six applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007.
Support for the new Ribbon user interface extensibility model.
Support for the new application-level customizable task pane.
Support for managed code behind InfoPath 2007 forms.
Application-level add-in projects for five Microsoft Office 2003 applications (Professional Edition and Standard Edition): Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Visio 2003, and Microsoft Office Word 2003.

VSTO 2005 SE can be installed on top of any of the following versions of Visual Studio 2005:

Visual Studio 2005 Professional*
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System

* Note that if you install on top of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, no document-level customizations or other functionality that is part of the full version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (VSTO 2005) is installed. VSTO 2005 SE adds only the application-level features listed in the feature highlights section above.

If you install on top of one of the Visual Studio Team editions or Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, you will have VSTO 2005 project types available side by side with VSTO 2005 SE projects.

Top of page

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP

Supported Microsoft Office versions: Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition; 2007 Microsoft Office system

Do not install VSTO 2005 SE on a computer that has more than one version of Microsoft Office installed.

Top of page

Instructions

Before you install:

Make sure you have only one version of Microsoft Office installed. VSTO 2005 SE does not support configurations where two different versions of Microsoft Office products are installed side by side, and it is known to not work properly in such configurations.
To create the new InfoPath template form projects enabled by VSTO 2005 SE, InfoPath 2007 must be installed before you install VSTO 2005 SE. If it is not, the InfoPath project template will not be included among the available templates. If you install InfoPath 2007 after VSTO 2005 SE, you can use the Repair feature of VSTO 2005 SE in Add/Remove Programs to enable the new InfoPath project type in Visual Studio.
VSTO 2005 SE Beta users: If you have previously installed the VSTO 2005 SE Beta release, you must uninstall all of its three components before installing this final release. You can uninstall the beta using the Add/Remove Programs feature in Windows.
VSTO “v3” CTP users: If you previously installed any of the VSTO “v3” CTPs, you need to completely remove the CTP software from your computer before you install VSTO 2005 SE. Because the CTP’s ability to uninstall itself is very limited and unreliable, we strongly recommend that you restore your system in its entirety from a backup made before any VSTO “v3” CTP software was installed. This will require you to reinstall Visual Studio as well. If VSTO 2005 SE is installed on computers where VSTO “v3” CTP software is installed, or was installed but not removed properly, you may experience various error messages and failures. (If restoring a backup of your computer is not an option, you can try to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 and all related products from your computer, and then install them again. This is not guaranteed to completely remove the CTPs, but it has been reported to be sufficient to enable VSTO 2005 SE to work.)
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Tools for Visual Studio 2005 users: If you plan to use VSTO 2005 SE with InfoPath 2007, uninstall InfoPath 2003 Tools for Visual Studio 2005 before you install VSTO 2005 SE.

How to install:

Remove conflicting prerelease software:

If the target computer had a VSTO "v3" CTP installed, restore your computer from a backup made before the CTP was installed to prevent errors with VSTO 2005 SE.
If the target computer had the VSTO 2005 SE Beta installed, uninstall the three beta components by using the Add/Remove Programs feature in Windows. Uninstall the components one by one in the following order:

Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System (Infopath 2007 Beta Support)
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Beta
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Runtime Beta
Uninstall InfoPath 2003 Tools for Visual Studio 2005.

Install prerequisite software:

If not installed already, install one of the supported versions of Visual Studio 2005 mentioned above.
If not installed already, install one of the supported versions of Microsoft Office mentioned above.
If you are using the 2007 Microsoft Office release, install InfoPath 2007 if you intend to use it.

Click the download link and then click Run to install immediately, or click Save to save the installation package to install later.

Note: VSTO 2005 SE will be installed even if no Microsoft Office products are installed. However, before you can build and run any of the new project types, you must install the corresponding Microsoft Office application. For example, to build and run add-ins for Visio 2007, you must have Visio 2007 installed on the computer, or a suite that includes it. Similarly, to run a Word 2003 add-in, you must have Word 2003 installed, or a suite that includes that application.

Top of page

Additional Information

Documentation:

VSTO 2005 SE documentation is available on MSDN. Also, see the main VSTO 2005 SE Web page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/tool/vsto/2005SE for other helpful pointers.

Project migration:

VSTO 2005 SE has no effect on the design-time functionality of VSTO 2005. Projects created in VSTO 2005 continue to work after VSTO 2005 SE is installed without any migration steps needed, as long as Microsoft Office 2003 remains installed.

VSTO 2005 SE does not automatically convert Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 add-ins created in VSTO 2005 into the new Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 add-in project types introduced by VSTO 2005 SE. The VSTO 2005 add-in project type for Outlook 2003 continues to work side by side with the new Outlook project types from VSTO 2005 SE, as long as VSTO 2005 and Microsoft Office 2003 are installed.

Automatic project migration from any prerelease software, such as the VSTO "v3" CTP or the VSTO 2005 SE Beta is not supported and has not been tested. To convert a project created using any of this prerelease software into one supported by VSTO 2005 SE, create new projects in VSTO 2005 SE and transfer relevant code from your prerelease projects manually.

Updated redistributable runtime:

The VSTO 2005 SE runtime is required on users’ computers for the new features enabled by VSTO 2005 SE to run properly. (One exception is the InfoPath 2007 form project, which does not require the runtime.)

The runtime deployment package that accompanies VSTO 2005 SE is installed on your computer in the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition folder as VSTOR.exe. This is the runtime deployment package that you may freely redistribute with your VSTO 2005 SE or VSTO 2005 applications, subject to your Visual Studio 2005 license agreement.

There is also a copy of VSTOR.exe available for direct download at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=49612 and installation by your users.

This updated runtime is a replacement for the VSTO 2005 runtime and is fully backward compatible with solutions authored using VSTO 2005. It contains enhancements that help solutions built on Microsoft Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 run more reliably in the 2007 Microsoft Office system than they would with the original VSTO 2005 runtime.

Top of page