VSTO 2005 SE includes project templates for many applications in Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. For the complete list of applications, see Features Available by Product Combination.

The new add-in project templates are located under the Visual Basic projects and Visual C# projects folders, under a subfolder named Office, in folders named 2003 Add-ins and 2007 Add-ins.

The add-in project templates have a new programming model that differs from Outlook 2003 add-ins created by using VSTO 2005. For more information, see Getting Started Programming Application-Level Add-ins.

You can create custom task panes for some applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system by using add-ins. For more information, see Custom Task Panes Overview.

You can customize the Ribbon user interface (UI) of some applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system by using add-ins. For more information, see Ribbon Extensibility Overview.

You can create custom form regions for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 by using add-ins. For more information, see Outlook Form Regions Overview.

The Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 form template design environment is fully integrated into the Visual Studio development environment. You can work with the features of InfoPath 2007 to design the look of your InfoPath form template at the same time that you write managed code to extend its capabilities without leaving Visual Studio. When working with InfoPath form templates in Visual Studio, you write business logic in Visual C# or Visual Basic against either the InfoPath 2003-compatible object model (members of the Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.SemiTrust namespace) or the new InfoPath 2007 managed code object model (members of the Microsoft.Office.InfoPath namespace). For more information, see Welcome to the InfoPath Developer Reference for Managed Code.

The project templates are located under the Visual Basic projects and Visual C# projects folders, in a subfolder named Office.

A new project template for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 templates has been added. For more information, see Excel Template Project Template.

A new project template for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 projects has been added. For more information, see Outlook Add-in Project Template.

Excel no longer has only one code file for the workbook. There are separate code files for each worksheet, and one for the workbook. Microsoft Office Word 2003 has one code file for the document or template. For more information, see Hidden Project Files in Solution Explorer.

Excel and Word documents and templates open inside Visual Studio, as a visual design surface. You can design your document and write code behind it in the same environment. For more information, see Office Documents in the Visual Studio Environment Overview.

You can drag normal Visual Studio controls from the Toolbox onto your document. For more information, see Windows Forms Controls on Office Documents Overview.

You can take advantage of new controls, called host controls, that extend some of the built-in objects of Office. These objects now expose events and have data binding capability. For more information, see Host Items and Host Controls Overview.

A project template is available to help you create Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 add-ins. For more information, see Getting Started Programming Application-Level Add-ins.

Support is now available for adding an actions pane to your document easily. For more information, see Actions Pane Overview.

Support is now available for adding smart tags to your document easily. For more information, see Smart Tags Overview.

You can program against the data in your Office documents without having to use the object model of the Office application. For more information, see Data Model Overview.

You can access and manipulate the data inside an Office document on a server without starting the Office application. For more information, see Server-Side Access to Data in Documents Overview.

Data can be stored in an XML data island attached to your Office document, so that the data can be used offline or on a server. For more information, see Data Model Overview and How to: Cache Data for Use Offline or on a Server.

Deployment now uses application and deployment manifests to make it easier to update solutions. For more information, see Deploying Document-Level Customizations.