Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 11, Visual Studio Tools for Office

#85 Display a Windows Form from Excel 2003

HACK

Once the Visual Studio Wizard has completed the project setup, you will be

dropped into the solution. At this point, you will need to add a Windows

Form to the application and name it

GetCustomer.

Next, create a form that looks similar to Figure 11-6 and set the controls’

properties according to Table 11-1.

Initialize the Windows Form

In order to communicate with the code behind the Excel document, you will

need to pass the

ThisWorkbook object as a parameter to your Windows Form.

So, first, you will need to create a class-level variable in your Windows

Form:

private OfficeCodeBehind excelCode;

The next step is to modify the Windows Forms constructor to accept the

ThisWorkbook object as a parameter. In C#, the form constructor will have

the same name as your form class. Here’s the empty constructor for the

GetConstructor form:

public GetCustomer( )

{

}

Update this constructor to take the CodeBehind object as a parameter of type

OfficeCodeBehind and add code to store the object in the excelCode variable

Figure 11-6. GetCustomer Windows Form

Table 11-1. Windows Form controls and properties

Required controls Properties

Label Text: Customer Name:

ComboBox Name: cboCustomer

Label Text: Year

ComboBox Name: cboYear

Button (Get Data) Name: cmdOK