When you create a new application-level project for Excel by using Visual Studio Tools for Office, Visual Studio automatically creates a ThisAddIn.vb or ThisAddIn.cs code file. You can access the Application object by using Me.Application or this.Application.

When you create a new document-level project for Excel by using Visual Studio Tools for Office, you have the option of creating a new Excel Workbook or Excel Template project. Visual Studio Tools for Office automatically creates the following code files in your new Excel project for both workbook and template projects.

You can use the global class, Globals, to access ThisWorkbook, Sheet1, Sheet2, or Sheet3 from outside of the respective class. For more information, see Global Access to Objects in Visual Studio Tools for Office Projects. The following example calls the PrintPreview method of Sheet1 regardless of whether the code is placed in the Sheet class or the Workbook class.

Globals.Sheet1.PrintPreview()

Globals.Sheet1.PrintPreview(missing);

Because the data in an Excel document is highly structured, the object model is hierarchical and straightforward. Excel provides hundreds of objects with which you might want to interact, but you can get a good start on the object model by focusing on a very small subset of the available objects. These objects include the following four:

• Application

• Workbook

• Worksheet

• Range

Much of the work done with Excel centers around these four classes and their members.

Application Object

The Excel Application object represents the Excel application itself. The Application object exposes a great deal of information about the running application, the options applied to that instance, and the current user objects open within the instance.

Note:
You should not set the EnableEvents property of the Application object in Excel to false. Setting this property to false prevents Excel from raising any events, including the events of host controls.

Workbook Object

Worksheet Object

Range Object

It is important to understand the differences between the native objects provided by the Excel object model and the extended objects (host items and host controls) provided by Visual Studio Tools for Office. Both types of objects are available to document-level projects.

The differences are in the following four areas:

• Design time. When you add any of the extended Excel objects at design time, they are automatically created as host items and host controls. For example, if you add a list to a worksheet in the designer, code is automatically generated to extend the list into a Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel..::.ListObject control.

• Run time. Host items are not automatically created at run time. If you add workbooks, worksheets, or chart sheets at run time, they are native Excel objects and do not have the additional capabilities that host items provide. You can programmatically add many of the host controls. For more information, see Host Items and Host Controls Overview.

• Data binding and events. Host items and host controls have data-binding capabilities and events, which are not available to the native objects.

• Types. The native Excel objects use the types defined in the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel namespace, whereas host items and host controls use the aggregated types defined in the Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel namespace.

For information about the classes you can use in the Excel object model, see the following sets of documentation:

• Microsoft Office Excel Primary Interop Reference

• Welcome to the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Developer Reference

• Welcome to the Microsoft Office Excel 2003 VBA Language Reference

The first link provides information about the classes and interfaces in the primary interop assembly for Excel. The other links provide information about the Excel object model as it is exposed to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code. Each set of documentation has advantages and disadvantages for developers who are using Visual Studio Tools for Office.

Primary Interop Assembly Reference

VBA Reference

Additional Types in Primary Interop Assemblies

Concepts

Other Resources