Features Available by Office Application and Project Type

Visual Studio 2010 has several types of project templates that support different business scenarios for Microsoft Office applications, including the following types:

• Document-level customizations.

• Application-level add-ins.

Not all applications can use every project type. For example, document-level projects are available only for Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel. Similarly, some features are available only for certain types of projects or applications. For example, the actions pane is available only in document-level projects, and Ribbon extensions are available only for some applications. For more information about the different project types, see Office Solutions Development Overview.

Project Types Available for Different Microsoft Office Applications

The following table shows the applications that you can use with each project type.

Features Available in Different Project Types

The following table shows which project types provide each feature.

Feature	Project types that provide the feature	Further reading
Actions pane.	Document-level projects.	Actions Pane Overview
ClickOnce deployment.	Application-level and document-level projects.	Deploying Office Solutions
Custom task panes.	Application-level projects for the following applications: Excel InfoPath Outlook PowerPoint Word	Custom Task Panes Overview
Custom XML parts.	Document-level projects. Application level projects for the following applications: Excel PowerPoint Word	Custom XML Parts Overview
Data cache.	Document-level projects.	Cached Data in Document-Level Customizations
Expose an object in a document-level customization to VBA code in the document.	Document-level projects.	Calling Code in Document-Level Customizations from VBA
Expose an object in an application-level add-in to other Microsoft Office solutions.	Application-level projects.	Calling Code in Application-Level Add-ins from Other Office Solutions
The following host controls: Chart ListObject NamedRange Content controls Bookmark	Document-level projects. Application-level projects for Word and Excel.	Host Items and Host Controls Overview
The following host controls: XMLMappedRange XMLNode XMLNodes	Document-level projects.	Host Items and Host Controls Overview
Multi-project deployment.	Document-level projects. Application-level projects.	Walkthrough: Deploying Multiple Office Solutions in a Single ClickOnce Installer for the .NET Framework 4
Outlook form regions.	Application-level projects for Outlook.	Creating Outlook Form Regions
Post-deployment actions.	Document-level projects. Application-level projects.	Walkthrough: Copying a Document to the End User Computer after a ClickOnce Installation
Ribbon customizations.	Document-level projects. Application-level projects for the following applications: Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 InfoPath 2010 Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2010 Project 2010 Visio 2010 Word 2007 and Word 2010	Ribbon Overview
Smart tags (using the programming model for Office projects in Visual Studio, rather than using the Smart Tag SDK). Note Smart tags are deprecated in Excel 2010 and Word 2010. For more information, see Smart Tags Overview.	Document-level projects. Application-level projects for Word and Excel.	Smart Tags Overview
Visual document designer.	Document-level projects.	Office Projects in the Visual Studio Environment

See Also

Concepts

Office Solutions Development Overview

Host Items and Host Controls Overview

Cached Data in Document-Level Customizations

Other Resources

Getting Started (Office Development in Visual Studio)

Actions Pane Overview

Ribbon Overview

Creating Outlook Form Regions

Smart Tags Overview

Deploying Office Solutions