Visual Studio Tools for Office: Using Visual Basic 2005 with Excel, Word, Outlook, and InfoPath

15. Working with the Actions Pane

Introduction to the Actions Pane

Developing a solution that runs within an Office application provides considerable benefits because you can take advantage of the functionality that already exists in Office. Sometimes, however, it is hard to design a user interface that meets your needs, as most of the user interface space is controlled by the Office application. Office 2003 and VSTO introduce a number of new user interface capabilities, including the ability to use Windows Forms controls on the document. (See Chapter 14, “Using Windows Forms in VSTO,” for more information on this capability.)

Placing a control on the document is not always the right paradigm for the user interface of your application. Putting ...