I get a few emails each week from people asking about various VSTO related scenarios. I can usually point them to a related MSDN forum entry or blog post, or even (on a good day!) solve it for them myself.
Interestingly the question of Access add-ins has come up a few times lately, so I thought I’d make mention of it here.
Basically, the official position is that building Access Add-ins is NOT supported. There’s no template in Visual Studio for building any type of VSTO add-in for Access.
However, that’s not to say something can’t be done. Andrew Whitechapel wrote an excellent post back in February that covers the possibilities. Suffice to say, it is possible (in the sense that just about anything is possible) but – I repeat – is expressly NOT supported by Microsoft (his post explains why).
(Note: I haven’t tried this – I’m simply linking to it)
(Aside: If you are looking for the Access 2007 Developer Extensions (ADE) click here)
Kinda related posts:
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I am trying to find "The Property Scanner" for Access 2003 which apparently was part of the ADE in VSTO back in the day. Does it exist? Is it worth the effort for an Access only shop and programmer-lite?
I just uploaded VS2008 VSTO projects for creating Access add-ins to http://www.codeplex.com/VSTO . I also have projects for SharePoint Designer 2007 and will have Publisher projects soon.
Awesome work Bryan. I’m downloading it now.
The Access 2003 Developer Extensions are no longer available as a standalone download. However, they are still available from MSDN Downloads if you have a current MSDN subscription.
I just downloaded (4.1 MB) and installed the Access 2003 Developer extensions from MSDN, and it includes the Property Scanner. But you will need to have an MSDN Subscription to download it, and it requires a key to install it
Thanks. I just uploaded Publisher 2007 VSTO templates to http://www.codeplex.com/VSTO