December 2004
Intermediate to advanced
528 pages
14h 30m
English
Content preview from Microsoft® .NET Development for Microsoft Office
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Chapter 5. Add-Ins
Add-ins enable you to extend the capabilities of Office applications by adding custom commands and specialized features that meet a specific business requirement. Over time, the term "add-in" has been used to cover a wide range of different technologies, as described in Table 5-1.
Table 5-1. Add-In Types
Technique | Description | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|---|
VBA add-ins (Excel XLAs, Word DOTs) | Office applications support VBA add-ins that you can create with the VBA Editor included in each application. | Easy to develop. | Not compiled, run slowly, are susceptible to user corruption, lead to unstructured, unmaintainable code, and can pose a security risk. |
Excel XLLs, Word WLLs, and Visio VSLs | Compiled, application-specific DLLs, developed in languages ... |