Building Visio Add-Ins using VB Experss?

[Don Steven-Rayburn]

Is it possible to build Visio Add-Ins using Visual Basic Express 2008?

I am a retired developer and so can no longer afford the MSDN Universal
Subscription that I used to have. However, I still do some development
for my local Habitat for Humanity affiliate which renovates century old
rowhouses in inner-city Baltimore. We use Visio to produce floor plans
for these renovations.

I would like to write an add-in in VB-Express 2008 to automate some of
this process. I know about VSTO but it will not install without having
the full Visual Studio installed.

Any help would be appreciated.

Don

 

[David Parker]

I'm not familiar with the Express edition (I haven't retired yet), but can
you make an exe (should still work but slower) or a COM Add-in dll?
Does the Visio 2007 SDK add any VS templates for you?

 

[Don Steven-Rayburn]

I'm not familiar with the Express edition (I haven't retired yet), but
can you make an exe (should still work but slower) or a COM Add-in dll?
Does the Visio 2007 SDK add any VS templates for you?

Bingo! I didn't notice the VB template because I have both VB2005
Express and VB2008 Express installed but have migrated all of my code
development to 2008 and so did not look for a VB2005 template. The
Visio SDK did install a template in VB 2005.

Unless I can figure out how to migrate the VB template to VB2008, I
guess I will have to go back to VB 2005. Not a biggie but mildly annoying.

Thanks, David.

Don

 

[Pavel Vancak]

I think VSTO should work without MSVS. It's a common type library needed as an runtime library for projects based on it (eg. Remote Calendars - syncing Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar).