Hello, I have been perusing the internet in search of the best way to accomplish this, but have had no luck. If someone here has experience with Office add-ins, I would really appreciate any help, I'm not asking for a solution by any means, just assistance with which direction to take.
The software I'm working on is primarily in VB.Net and C#; IDE is VS2008
Here's my scenario:
- The user opens a Word template from a form within our software (currently just via
Process.Start(TemplateFileName.dot) - New document opens in Word from the template and needs to display a custom toolbar with a button added to it (e.g. btn1)
- The custom toolbar has to be able to receive some parameters, passed from our software (e.g. AccountNumber, PatientName)
- The user then edits the document, and upon clicking btn1, it saves the newly created document, creating a directory on the server from the AccountNumber that was passed in if such a directory does not already exist.
- Closes Word.
I need help with understanding which technologies to use in order to create such an add-in. Considering the functionality is very basic, I didn't know whether a COM add-in would be necessary. I'm not sure what would be the best way to pass values to Word from within our application.
This add-in needs to be deployed to roughly 40 users, ideally I would like to integrate the installation of the add-in into the installation of the software.
All users have Office 2003 installed.
It should only be visible in this particular scenario, e.g. if a user opens Word on their machine independently of this circumstance, I would prefer for the add-in not to be displayed.
I'm a junior dev that has never worked with any kind of MS Office development and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!