Edit

Outlook Primary Interop Assembly reference

  • Article

The Outlook 2013 Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) reference provides help for developing managed applications for Outlook 2013. It extends the Outlook 2013 Developer Reference from the COM environment to the managed environment and focuses on how to use the PIA. It includes all the additions and changes to the object model in Outlook 2013, and provides many code samples in C# and Visual Basic to show how to perform common tasks in Outlook.

If you are new to developing solutions for Outlook, see Selecting an API or technology for developing solutions for Outlook to identify the APIs and technologies that are most appropriate for your needs.

Purpose of the Outlook PIA reference

If you are just beginning to write add-ins for Outlook, you should first refer to the conceptual content in the Outlook 2013 Developer Reference. Even though the programming environment and accessing certain methods and connecting to events are different in COM and in managed development, features in the Outlook object model behave the same way in both COM and managed development. You can refer to the conceptual content in the Outlook 2013 Developer Reference to understand how to use the different features of the object model.

If you have a basic understanding of the Outlook object model and are learning to develop managed Outlook add-ins, see Setting up to use the Outlook PIA.

For information about developing managed Office solutions by using Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013, see Office Development in Visual Studio.

For information about how to program some basic Outlook tasks in both Visual Basic and C#, see Outlook solutions.

For more advanced code examples, see How do I... (Outlook 2013 PIA Reference) in this reference.

If you are already familiar with the Outlook object model, you have some experience writing managed applications, and you are using the Outlook PIA for the first time, start with Installing and referencing the Outlook PIA and Architecture of the Outlook PIA.

Accessing the Outlook PIA reference in design time

If you use Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 and you are connected to the Internet, you can access context-sensitive Help when you press F1 in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). This Help content is the Outlook 2013 PIA reference.

In this section

See also