I know this may be a relatively stupid question, but if I don't ask, I'll never know.....

I have just installed vsto 2005, got the book vsto 2005 by eric carter/eric lippert, and notice that in trying to work with vsto that I am desperately missing some items....

When I do file... new project..... per all instructions I've seen before says..... "in the list of project templastes select excel workbook"

I'm going crazy trying to figure this out.... the excel workbook icon that is shown in all examples is NOT an available template within the office sub-folder...??????

I have browsed for most of the day today through this forum, as well as both the Eric's blogs, and have found nothing that will help... The only selections I have within file.... new project..... office..... is the following: excel addin, outlook addin, powerpoint addin, visio addin, word addin.

Yes, I do have the PIA's installed.... yes I think I did it in the correct order....

Help!!!! I'm at my wits end!!

Rick Norris

1. File->New Project
2. Open Visual C#

What is the Visual Studio edition you are using?

The fact that you have "Excel Addin" ... "Word Addin" available is indicating that somehow you have an incorrect version available.

The version referred in Eric's book is Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 2005 where you can create for example "Excel Workbook" or "Excel Template" projects.

Creating an Excel Add-in is not possible other than building a 'Shared Add-in' from the Extensibility option or build it yourself using earlier 'Add-in' stuff. (Leaving the new VSTO beta's out of scope, -there- you -are- capable of creating application wide Add-ins).

-= Maarten =-

Hi Rick

Did you download and install the VSTO 2005 SE - the beta targeted at Office 2007? It sounds very much like it. The document-specific projects discussed in the "Erics-book" aren't part of that beta. There is no download version of the full "traditional" VSTO 2005, only of the beta.

Question.....

Will I have to buy the full VSTO 2005?? I already have Visual Studio 2005 Professional....

Thanks for the input..... you were right on target in that I did download the vsto 2005 se beta...

Thanks again.

Rick Norris

According to:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/compare/default.aspx
you either have two options:

Get Visual Studio Tools for Office Edition, or
Get or upgrade to Visual Studio Team System

In fact, there is another option, i.e. get an MSDN subscribtion that has the VSTO edition incorporated. It is most likely cheaper and you get a lot of other benefits with that.

-= Maarten =-