Office Development Offers Choices After Muddled Past

Office 2010 continues support for developer technologies to automate common tasks and create “smart-client” user interfaces that provide access to business data. Client applications built on Office can speed tasks for users who spend much of their time working in Office applications, and improve data entry and reporting by simplifying data transfer into and out of the suite. The two primary Office development technologies, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), received minor updates in their latest releases. However, change may come with the next Office release.

Office-Based Solutions Keep Users in Familiar Environment

Solutions based on Office, sometimes called Office Business Applications (OBAs), can be delivered in the following ways:

• Code contained within an Office document that is loaded with and runs on that document only
• Reference services accessed through the Research Task Pane of Office applications, which can allow users to look