Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Visual Add-ins

Visual add-ins interact with the active sheet, selected range, or active workbook through menu items, dialog boxes, and toolbars that you create from within the add-in. By convention, visual add-ins add a menu item to the Tool menu in Excel (see Table 22-1).

Add-ins provide the following events that let you add and remove menu items and toolbars when the add-in is installed or uninstalled:

    ' ThisWorkbook class
    Private Sub Workbook_AddinInstall( )
        ' Add menu items and toolbars here.
    End Sub

    Private Sub Workbook_AddinUninstall( )
        ' Remove menu items and toolbars.
    End Sub

The Workbook_Open and Workbook_BeforeClose events aren’t as useful from add-ins as the preceding events because they occur too often—whenever Excel opens or closes. The Workbook_AddinInstall and Workbook_AddinUninstall events occur only when the user selects or deselects the add-in from the Add-Ins dialog (Figure 22-3).