Excel Document-Level Customization Development

Applies to

The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office.

Project type

  • Document-level projects

Microsoft Office version

  • Excel 2003

  • Excel 2007

For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

A document-level customization for Microsoft Office Excel consists of an assembly that is associated with a specific workbook. The assembly typically extends the workbook by customizing the user interface (UI) and by automating Excel. Unlike an application-level add-in, which is associated with Excel itself, functionality that you implement in a customization is available only when the associated workbook is open in Excel.

For more information about document-level customizations, see Getting Started Programming Document-Level Customizations for Excel nd Architecture of Document-Level Customizations.

Excel Customization Programming Model

When you develop a document-level project for Excel, you work with Visual Studio Tools for Office features and automate Excel by using host items and host controls. These are classes that extend some of the objects that are provided by the native object model for Microsoft Office Excel (that is, the object model that is exposed by the primary interop assembly for Excel). For more information, see Automating Excel by Using Extended Objects.

For general information about the programming model of document-level customizations in Visual Studio Tools for Office, see Programming Document-Level Customizations.

Customizing the User Interface of Excel

For both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007, you can customize the UI in the following ways:

For Excel 2007, you can also customize the UI in the following ways:

For Excel 2003, you can also customize the UI in the following ways:

For more information about customizing the UI of Excel and other Microsoft Office applications, see Office UI Customization.

See Also

Concepts

Automating Excel by Using Extended Objects

Using Windows Forms Controls on Excel Worksheets

Getting Started Programming Document-Level Customizations for Excel

Programming Document-Level Customizations

Office UI Customization