Visual Studio .Net C# and Excel

I am intending to use C# and Excel together, using excel much like a grid
control. Can anyone point me in the right direction for tools in studio 2003
that will allow me to do this?

I have seen references to an Office Toolkit and I have seen references to
create an excel add-in in visual studio. Yet I have been unable to find any
current information on this and to find out what is the best practices for
dialoging with excel via COM and C#. Any help would be appreciated to
highlight the best and worst methods.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Adam

"Adam" wrote:
> I am intending to use C# and Excel together, using excel much like a grid
> control. Can anyone point me in the right direction for tools in studio 2003
> that will allow me to do this?

Let me take a deep breath before I say this:

"Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System," or VSTO for short.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/und...o/default.aspx

It's not part of the standard Visual Studio distribution. If you're an MSDN
subscriber, you'll find it on one of the Developer Tools disks. Otherwise,
check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vsto/default.aspx for some
sobering news.

Besides the sample code, tutorials & multimedia links available at the first
URL above, there is a relatively new book from MS Press by Andrew Whitechapel
called "Microsoft .NET development for Microsoft Office." I just started it.
Looks promising.

And if you go to all the effort to figure out .NET for Office, you'll be
happy to know you can do more than use Excel as a grid control.

Thanks for the info. After I posted I looked into VSTO, but I also came
across some info on PIA and also creating Excel Addins with PIA in VS. Can
you or anyone tell me what the disadvantages of using either method of
development?

Regards,
Adam

"Shawn O'Donnell" wrote:

> "Adam" wrote:
> > I am intending to use C# and Excel together, using excel much like a grid
> > control. Can anyone point me in the right direction for tools in studio 2003
> > that will allow me to do this?
>
> Let me take a deep breath before I say this:
>
> "Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System," or VSTO for short.
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/und...o/default.aspx
>
> It's not part of the standard Visual Studio distribution. If you're an MSDN
> subscriber, you'll find it on one of the Developer Tools disks. Otherwise,
> check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vsto/default.aspx for some
> sobering news.
>
> Besides the sample code, tutorials & multimedia links available at the first
> URL above, there is a relatively new book from MS Press by Andrew Whitechapel
> called "Microsoft .NET development for Microsoft Office." I just started it.
> Looks promising.
>
> And if you go to all the effort to figure out .NET for Office, you'll be
> happy to know you can do more than use Excel as a grid control.