Sometimes you hear
these described as ???COM components,??? a term that is somewhat correct. ActiveX is based on
the Microsoft COM (Component Object Model) technology, and the two terms are often used
interchangeably.
The Microsoft development world is moving away from COM and ActiveX for many reasons,
but there are so many classic VB applications out there that it is still a worthwhile
exercise to see what they have to offer.
The .NET tie-in comes to us via Visual Studio Tools for Office Second Edition (VSTO SE),
provided by Microsoft. By adding VSTO SE to your Visual Studio installation, you receive a rich
set of tools that allow you to program Microsoft Office applications from the Visual Studio programming
environment. Imagine opening a new Excel project and seeing Excel within the
Visual Studio 2005 development environment. There is some really neat stuff here with so
many possibilities.
In this chapter, we??™ll look at ways to incorporate ActiveX components in our Excel projects.
Then we??™ll take a dive into VSTO SE and explore some of the advantages that this maturing platformcan
give us as Office developers.
Using ActiveX Components in Your
Excel 2007 Projects
We are at a technology crossroads as year 2007 draws to an end. Microsoft??™s .NET technologies
have reached their stride and are becoming more widespread. Classic Visual Basic (VB 6)
applications will be supported throughout the Windows Vista life cycle (five years). This means
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Microsoft will guarantee that applications and components (DLLs) created in VB 6 will continue
to run in Windows Vista as they did in Windows XP.
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