Helpful advice on developing a professional MS Word add-on
- by Dan Tao
A few months back I put together a simple proof-of-concept piece of software for a small firm with an idea for a document editing tool. The company wanted this tool to be integrated into Microsoft Word, understandably, to maximize its accessibility to the average user.
I essentially wrote the underlying library with all of the core functionality as a C# project, and then used VSTO to get it running inside of Word. It felt like a bit of a duct tape solution, really; but then, I have (practically) zero experience developing tools for integration with MS Office, and it was only a proof of concept anyway.
Well, the firm was quite pleased with my work overall, and they're looking to move from "proof of concept" to the real deal. Fortunately, as I said, the core functionality is all there and will only need to be somewhat tweaked and enhanced. My main concern is figuring out how to put together an application that will integrate with MS Word in a clean and polished way, and which can be deployed easily in accordance with a regular user's expectations (i.e., simply running an install program and voila, it's there in Word).
I seem to remember reading somewhere that nobody uses VSTO for real professional projects. Is this true? False? What are the alternatives? And what are the tips and gotchas that I should be aware of before getting started on this issue of MS Word integration?
