VSTO For Dummies

Chapter 10. Building an Outlook Job Jar Add-in

In This Chapter

• Creating standard Outlook items

• Extending the user interface with Form Regions

• Using Ribbon Designer

• Putting all this knowledge to practical use

Many people use Outlook every day. We're pretty sure that we're not the only ones who spend hours every day using Outlook to write e-mails, create calendar entries and tasks, and so on. The wide usage of Outlook makes it a perfect candidate for extending its functionality and customizing it.

With add-ins for Outlook, you can extend the existing functionality and customize it to your needs or your customers' needs. In this chapter, we focus on development tasks in Microsoft Outlook, and you build a sample VSTO Outlook add-in project.

This chapter is a little different than the ones that cover Excel or Word solution development. In this chapter, you develop an application-level customization add-in, while in the other chapters about Excel and Word, you develop document-level customizations.

Creating a Quick Example of an Outlook Add-in

In this chapter, you use the Outlook object model to access methods and properties and respond to events Outlook raises. Pause for a moment and think about what you can actually do in Outlook. Sure, you can receive and send e-mails, create tasks, send meeting requests, use calendars and appointments, and manipulate contacts, but those features are only a small subset of the items you can use.

The best part is that practically everything you can do as a regular ...