Add-in Express for Microsoft .net and Office Key benefits

• Application-level Office extensibility. You use a set of Office-specific solution templates, wizards, visual designers and components to build various types of application-level extensions including Office COM Add-ins, Outlook plug-ins, Excel XLL, RTD servers, Automation add-ins and smart tags.
• Version-independent add-ins for Office. Add-in Express empowers you with version-neutral run-time, so you needn't write code for each Office version. You develop a single code base and have your extension work in all available Office versions and Office suites (Student, Home, Standard, Professional, Professional Plus, Ultimate, Enterprise). No application-specific solutions, no version-specific projects, no shared assemblies are required. All you need to do is specify the minimum version of Microsoft Office you want to support.
• Effective project architecture and coherent programming model. Add-in Express empowers you with a strong solution architecture and coherent programming model complemented by a combination of .NET components, visual designers and deployment tools that will help you avoid a nightmare of monotonous coding. Add-in Express generates ready-to-use solution templates and makes your Office solutions secure, isolated, managed, deployable and updatable with your minimal effort.
• Outlook is a premium targeted application. Using Add-in Express components and their visual designers you can make your Outlook menus, toolbars, ribbons or certain controls context sensitive, bind them to specified folders or content types, build option and folder property pages, add navigation pane shortcuts, embed view and form regions and more.
• Advanced Outlook view and form regions for Outlook. Add-in Express gives you the Advanced Outlook Regions that are shared (you can place several forms from several add-ins into one region), version-neutral and flexible (you can add regions for Outlook views, forms, To-Do bar, Navigation and Reading panes).
• Excel-specific features. With Add-in Express you can create Excel application-level extensions including COM add-ins, smart tags, real-time data servers (RTDs), user-defined function add-ins (UDFs, Automation add-ins) and XLL add-ins.
• Advanced task panes for Excel, Word and PowerPoint. For your Excel, Word and PowerPoint add-ins, you can use the Advanced Office Task Panes to extend document views with your own .net forms. In contrast to the standard Office task panes, advanced task panes provided by Add-in Express are version-neutral, shared (they may contain one and more forms created by one or several add-ins), can be dragged between four docks or fixed in one of the docks, can be hidden, collapsed highlighted.
• Any .NET controls on Office toolbars. On all versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can place any built-in or third-party controls on Office toolbars. So, your own toolbars can contain grids, tree views, list views, user controls, forms, etc.
• Easy deployment. Each Add-in Express solution contains a setup project with all necessary prerequisites. Add-in Express supports several technologies and installation types to deploy and redeploy your solutions: Windows Installer, ClickOnce publishing, Msi-based web-deployment, InstallShield and WiX.
• True RAD tool. Finally, you use visual designers and components of Add-in Express instead of error-prone coding and have your development time significantly reduced. You don't need to worry about hand coding any plumbing code, focus on building your solution.

Add-in Express for Microsoft .net and Office Main Features
Here is just a list of what you can do using Add-in Express project templates, components and visual designers:

• Create your own or customize existing toolbars, menus and sub-menus for Microsoft Office.
• Add new or customize existing tabs for Office.
• Build the Quick Access Toolbar and the Office Menu.
• Build the Office Backstage View.
• Customize Outlook windows, views and forms with advanced regions.
• Completely replace Outlook views with your .NET forms.
• Create advanced custom task panes for Excel, Word, PowerPoint.
• Develop application-level keyboard shortcuts.
• Add Microsoft Outlook option and property pages.
• Use any .NET controls on Microsoft Office toolbars.
• Intercept any built-in controls, such as the Send button in Outlook, the Save and Save As buttons in Word, the Find button in Excel, etc.
• Develop in one project smart tag libraries with multiple, shared or dynamically created recognizers.
• Program Microsoft Excel RTD servers and topics.
• Develop new Excel worksheet functions (UDF) as Excel Automation add-in or an XLL add-in.
• Access any Office objects, their properties and methods, handle their events.