Task Pane in Office XP, 2003

[Jason Coley]

Is it possible to create a task pane in Office XP, 2003 using Delphi? Are
there any samples around that show how to do this?

Jason

 

[Cindy Meister]

Hi Jason

Not really. If you use SmartDocument technology (see msdn), you can work
with a Doucment Actions taskpane. But that's pretty much it.

VSTO 2005 has more capabilities in this direction, but it's not available to
Delphi (of course)

There's something called the "Information Bridge Framework" that might work
for you. I don't really know any details about it, but it's meant to link
together various kinds of technology, and has some kind of task pane support
for Office in it. Again, check msdn.

-- Cindy

 

[Jason Coley]

thanks Cindy, I have the beta 2 of VSTO 2005 and I have managed to create a
smart document type pane, but it creates the Document Actions pane. This is
great but I really want to create an actual Actions pane of my own. Is this
even possible, with VSTO or anything else?

Jason

P.S. I will look into the Information Bridge Framework to see if I have nay
joy there.

 

[Cindy Meister]

Hi Jason

Other than the three technologies I listed, no, there's no way to create a
task pane in Office.

Some people have fooled around with docking a UserForm. (A taskpane, BTW, is
just a toolbar with one huge control on it that support the ActiveX
controls.) I think someone in one of these Office Developer groups actually
found a fairly reasonable solution.

-- Cindy

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Another solution is to create a Windows form and tile it with the main window, resizing each as the other is changed in size. I've seen a couple of very slick applications that do this.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Cindy Meister]

Interesting thought.

"Tile with the main window", you mean the application window, I'm sure...

Would this be using the Windows API, then? I can't imagine how else, given a
WINDOWS Form, that the one could be resized and trigger resizing in the
other. With an Office UserForm, one should be able to use the internal
document events, I'd guess...

-- Cindy

 

[Alex]

Another solution is to create a Windows form and tile it with the main window, resizing each as the other is changed in size. I've seen a couple of > very slick applications that do this.

Interesting...

Are there code examples that do it?

 

[Jason Coley]

I would love to find out more about this UserForm stuff, but I can't find
this anywhere in the groups, any help?

Jason