Building COM Add-ins for Office Applications

Microsoft Office XP Developer

Because Microsoft® Office XP applications support the Component Object Model (COM) add-in architecture, you can use the same tools and installation file formats (a Microsoft® ActiveX® .dll or .exe) to develop add-ins for all Office applications. By building COM add-ins, you can extend the functionality of your Office-based applications without adding complexity for the user.

You can also create add-ins for Office Developer and for the Microsoft® Visual Basic® Editor. You can make such add-ins available to or from any application that supports Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), including applications other than Office.

In This Section

Working with Add-in Designers: Create and register your COM add-in with an add-in designer.
Specifying Load Behavior: Load (connect) the add-in, and make it available to the user; or unload (disconnect) the add-in, so it cannot be run.
Writing Code in the Add-in Designer: Begin writing code in the designer's class module when you have specified general information for a COM add-in in the add-in designer.
Hooking a COM Add-in Up to a Command Bar Control: Integrate your COM add-in (if it has a user interface) with the host application in some way, so the user can interact with it.
Debugging a COM Add-in: Load and use the COM add-in from within a Microsoft® Office XP application to test and debug it.
Making the DLL: Turn your COM add-in into a DLL when you have finished debugging it.
Distributing COM Add-ins: Install all the files necessary to distributing your COM add-in to other users on each user's system and register the add-in.
COM Add-ins and Security: Specify security settings for Microsoft® Office XP applications in the Office XP Security dialog box.

Related Sections

Add-ins, Templates, Wizards, and Libraries: Extend an application by adding functionality that is not in the core product itself by creating add-ins.
What Is a COM Add-in?: Extend the functionality of your Microsoft® Office-based applications without adding complexity for the user.
Building COM Add-ins for the Visual Basic Editor: Customize your development environment and work with components in a Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) project from code.
Building Application-Specific Add-ins: Add functionality to Microsoft® Office XP applications by creating application-specific add-ins.
Creating Templates: Learn how to give users a framework within which to complete common tasks by using templates.
Creating Wizards: Understand how to create a wizard to walk users through a series of steps to create a new document, spreadsheet, presentation, database, or Web application and to deliver an application is that is easy to use.
Building Reusable Code Libraries: Increase your efficiency by storing code for functionality you often implement in your procedures.