Accessing Office 2000 Developer Tools

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The Microsoft® Office 2000 Developer tools are available from the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) environment. Because Office 2000 applications use the same Visual Basic Editor, the tools are easy to find and use.

To use the Office 2000 Developer tools

  1. Open the Visual Basic for Applications environment.

  2. Load the Office 2000 Developer add-ins.

  3. Install source control components.

  4. Set up data access components.

  5. Locate and use the samples and templates.

Opening the Visual Basic for Applications Environment

To open the Visual Basic Editor in Office applications

  1. In your Office application, from the Tools menu, click Macro.

  2. From the expanded menu, click Visual Basic Editor.

    –or–

  • In your Office application, press ALT+F11.

 Loading Office 2000 Developer Add-Ins

Before you can use any of the Office 2000 Developer add-ins and controls, you must load them into the Visual Basic environment. The Office 2000 Developer add-ins are located in the Add-In Manager.

Note   The Access Source Control add-in is automatically loaded and is available on the Tools menu.

To load Office 2000 Developer add-ins

  1. In the Visual Basic Editor, from the Add-Ins menu, click Add-In Manager.

    The add-ins provided with Office 2000 Developer are listed in the Available Add-Ins list. Other add-ins may be available as well, including add-ins created in Microsoft® Visual Basic® and by third-party vendors.

  2. Double-click the desired add-in to load it. Double-click again to unload it. This toggles the Loaded\Unloaded option for the add-in.

    Tip   You may want to check the Load on Startup option so that the add-in reappears the next time you run the Visual Basic Editor. You only need to load the add-ins once if you choose this option. Each time you open the Visual Basic Editor in any Office application, the add-ins will be loaded.

Once an add-in is loaded in the Visual Basic environment, it appears in the Add-Ins menu and is available for use. To launch an add-in, select it from the Add-Ins menu.

For information about creating your own add-ins, see Chapter 11, "" in the MicrosoftOffice 2000/Visual Basic Programmer's Guide as well as , , and in the Visual Basic documentation.

Tip   Office 2000 Developer includes a number of samples and templates for creating add-ins using Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual J++. You can find these on the Office 2000 Developer CD in the \Samples directory.

Installing Source Control Components

To take advantage of the source control add-ins available in Office 2000 Developer, you need to install and configure Visual SourceSafe. You can install Visual SourceSafe from the Office 2000 Developer installation CD.

For more information about setting up Visual SourceSafe, see Setting Up Visual SourceSafe and in the MSDN Library.

For more information about using the source control add-ins, see Using Source Code Control.

Setting up Data Access Components

With Office 2000 Developer, you can more easily access data stored in external databases, such as SQL Server, and display the results within any of the productivity applications in Office.

During installation, Office 2000 Developer installs and registers items necessary to take advantage of data in your applications. However, to use them in your project, you need to identify them as active components.

Note   To use the Data Environment designer, you need to create a new project. The Data Environment designer is not available in the host project.

To select the components needed for data access

  1. Open the Visual Basic Editor (ALT+F11).

  2. From the Insert menu, select Components.

  3. In the Components dialog box, select the appropriate controls and designers that you want to use.

For more information about using data in your application, see Data Connectivity and Creating a Data Source Using Data Connectivity Tools.

Locating Samples and Templates

In the ..\ODETools\V9\Samples directory of the Office 2000 Developer tools CD, you will find a number of samples and templates that demonstrate some of the key features of Office 2000 Developer at work. For information about using these samples, refer to the readme files in each subdirectory.

There are also a number samples associated with the , which can be found on the Office 2000 Developer tools CD in the ..\OPG folder. For information about using these samples, see the readme file in this folder.

Note   The samples are not installed on your machine during setup. To use the samples, you need to copy the sample directories to your hard drive. See the readme files for more details.