Understanding Office Solution Development

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Developers have been able to build custom solutions based on the applications in Microsoft® Office for a long time. Each new version of Office brings new tools and technologies that make it easier to develop and deliver custom Office-based solutions. As companies have standardized on the Office suite of applications, users have become more and more familiar with these applications, and developers have learned to take advantage of the Office tools and technologies to create customized and integrated solutions on top of the Office suite of applications. These are solutions designed to improve users' ability to gather, analyze, customize, publish, and share information.

Microsoft Office 2000 includes powerful new technologies and improved programming models that are designed specifically to aid the developer in building custom Office solutions. The Office applications and components make it easier to connect to and work with corporate data and to move information from the Office applications to the Web.

This book was designed to help you understand the problems associated with custom solution development and give you the information you need to solve problems ranging from the simple to the complex. This chapter provides an overview of Office solution development. It is designed to give you a better understanding of what is new in Microsoft Office 2000 and how to use this book to find the information you need.

Contents

Developing Office Solutions

Office 2000 Programmability Enhancements

Pulling It All Together

Where to Go from Here