Microsoft Excel VBA and Macros (Office 2021 and Microsoft 365)

Chapter 27

An introduction to creating Office add-ins

In this chapter, you will:

• Create an Office add-in

• Add interactivity to an Office add-in

• Learn the basics of HTML and JavaScript

• Use XML to define an Office add-in

Office add-ins are applications that provide expanded functionality to a sheet, such as a selectable calendar, or an interface with the web, such as retrieving information from Wikipedia or Bing. Like Excel add-ins, once Office add-ins are installed, they’re always available. But unlike Excel add-ins, the Office add-ins have limited interaction with sheets and do not use VBA.

An Office add-in consists of a web app and a manifest file. The web app can simply be an HTML file that provides the user interface on a task or content ...