Walkthrough: Creating a Smart Tag that Converts Temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/.NET Framework 2.0

Other versions are also available for the following:

Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System

Walkthrough: Creating a Smart Tag that Converts Temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius

Note	Required applications
The features in this topic are available only if you have the required applications installed. For more information, see Features Available by Product Combination.	One of these development environments: VSTO 2005 -or- Visual Studio Team System Microsoft Office 2003

Note

Required applications

The features in this topic are available only if you have the required applications installed.

For more information, see Features Available by Product Combination.

One of these development environments:

VSTO 2005

-or-

Visual Studio Team System
Microsoft Office 2003

This walkthrough demonstrates creating a smart tag that recognizes Fahrenheit temperature strings. The smart tag includes an action that converts the temperature value to Celsius, and replaces the recognized text with a formatted Celsius temperature string.

During this walkthrough, you will learn how to:

Create a smart tag that recognizes a regular expression.
Create an action that retrieves data from the smart tag and modifies the recognized smart tag text.

Prerequisites

To complete this walkthrough, you will need:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System.
Microsoft Office Word 2003.

Creating a New Project

In this step, you will create a Word Document project.

To create a new project

Create a Word Document project with the name My Smart Tag, using either Visual Basic or C#. Make sure that Create a new document is selected. For more information, see How to: Create Visual Studio Tools for Office Projects.

Visual Studio opens the new Word document in the designer and adds the My Smart Tag project to Solution Explorer.

Configuring the Project

In this step, you will configure the project to run the code provided in this walkthrough.

To configure your project

On the Project menu, click Add Reference.
On the COM tab, select Microsoft Smart Tags 2.0 Type Library and click OK.
In Solution Explorer, right-click ThisDocument.vb (in Visual Basic) or ThisDocument.cs (in C#) and then click View Code.

Add the following line of code to the top of the file:

Visual Basic

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

Creating the Smart Tag

In this step, you will create a Visual Studio Tools for Office smart tag and add it to the document. You will also add a regular expression to the list of terms that the smart tag recognizes, and create an action that will be available when the user clicks the smart tag.

To create the smart tag

Replace the ThisDocument_Startup event handler in the ThisDocument class with the following code. This code creates a SmartTag that represents the Visual Studio Tools for Office smart tag, and adds a regular expression to the list of terms that the smart tag recognizes.

Visual Basic

WithEvents action1 As Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action

Private Sub ThisDocument_Startup(ByVal sender As Object, _
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Startup

    Dim smartTag1 As New Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.SmartTag( _
        "www.microsoft.com/Demo#DemoSmartTag", _
        "Demonstration Smart Tag")

    smartTag1.Expressions.Add( _
        New Regex("(?'number'[+-]?\b[0-9]+)?\s?(F|f)\b"))

private Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action action1;

private void ThisDocument_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.SmartTag smartTag1 =
        new Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.SmartTag(
        "www.microsoft.com/Demo#DemoSmartTag",
        "Demonstration Smart Tag");

    smartTag1.Expressions.Add(new Regex(
        @"(?'number'[+-]?\b[0-9]+)?\s?(F|f)\b"));

Create a new Action and add it to the Actions property of the smart tag. The Action represents an item that the user can click in the smart tag menu.

Visual Basic

action1 = New Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action( _
    "Convert to Celsius")

smartTag1.Actions = _
    New Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action() {action1}

action1 = new Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action(
    "Convert to Celsius");

smartTag1.Actions = new
    Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Action[] {action1};

Attach the smart tag to the document by adding the SmartTag to the VSTOSmartTags property. In C#, attach an event handler to the Click event of the action.

Visual Basic

    Me.VstoSmartTags.Add(smartTag1)
End Sub

    this.VstoSmartTags.Add(smartTag1);

    action1.Click += new
        Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.ActionClickEventHandler(
        action1_Click);
}

Creating an Event Handler for the Action

In this step, you will add an event handler for the Click event of the action. The event handler retrieves the Fahrenheit temperature value from the key number, which is in the property bag of the smart tag. The event handler then converts the Fahrenheit temperature value to Celsius, and replaces the recognized string. In this example, the key number identifies a captured group from the regular expression assigned to the smart tag. For more information about property bags and regular expressions in Visual Studio Tools for Office smart tags, see Smart Tags Architecture.

To create the event handler

Copy the following code to the ThisDocument class:

Visual Basic

Sub action1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _
    ByVal e As Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.ActionEventArgs) _
    Handles action1.Click

    Dim value As String = e.Properties.Read("number")
    Dim fahrenheit As Double = Convert.ToDouble(value)
    Dim celsius As Integer = Fix(fahrenheit - 32) * 5 / 9
    e.Range.Text = celsius.ToString() + "C"
End Sub

void action1_Click(object sender,
    Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.ActionEventArgs e)
{
    string value = e.Properties.get_Read("number");
    double fahrenheit = Convert.ToDouble(value);
    int celsius = (int)(fahrenheit - 32) * 5 / 9;
    e.Range.Text = celsius.ToString() + "C";
}

Testing the Application

Now you can test your document to make sure that the smart tag converts Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius.

To test your workbook

Press F5 to run your project.
Type a string that conforms to the regular expression you added to the smart tag, such as 60F, 60° F, or 60 F.

Note

To type a degree symbol (°), press ALT and type 248.
Click the smart tag icon that appears over the recognized string and then click Convert to Celsius.
Confirm that the original string is replaced with a new string that contains the temperature in Celsius.

Note
To type a degree symbol (°), press ALT and type 248.

Concepts

Smart Tags Overview
Smart Tags Architecture