Microsoft® .NET Development for Microsoft Office

Chapter 3. Office Interop Techniques

Now that we’ve covered the basic mechanics of how to interoperate between managed code and Microsoft Office applications, we’ll consider some techniques that build on the basic mechanics. In later chapters, we’ll examine the more narrowly focused protocols, such as add-ins, smart tags, and Visual Studio Tools for Office. In this chapter, we’ll explore less formalized techniques that are slightly outside the mainstream. Although some of these techniques are not commonly used, they do introduce important concepts such as late binding, reflection, and accessibility.

Specifically, the topics to be covered include:

• Platform Invoke. Using methods from unmanaged DLLs.

• Reflection. Instead of using the strong types provided ...