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Word Application-Level Add-in Development

Applies to

The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office.

Project type

  • Application-level projects

Microsoft Office version

  • Word 2003

  • Word 2007

For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

An application-level add-in for Microsoft Office Word consists of an assembly that is loaded by Word. The assembly typically extends Word by customizing the user interface (UI) and by automating Word. Unlike a document-level customization, which is associated with a specific document, functionality that you implement in an add-in is not restricted to any single document.

For general information about application-level add-ins, see Getting Started Programming Application-Level Add-Ins and Architecture of Application-Level Add-Ins.

Word Add-in Programming Model

When you create a Word add-in project, Visual Studio Tools for Office generates a class, called ThisAddIn, which is the foundation of your solution. This class provides a starting point for writing your code, and it also exposes the object model of Word to your add-in.

For more information about the ThisAddIn class and other Visual Studio Tools for Office features you can use in an add-in, see Programming Application-Level Add-Ins.

Customizing the User Interface of Word

For Word 2007, you can customize the UI in the following ways:

For Word 2003, you can customize the UI in the following ways:

For more information about customizing the UI of Word and other Microsoft Office applications, see Office UI Customization.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Creating Your First Application-Level Add-in for Word

Walkthrough: Adding Controls to a Document at Run Time in an Application-Level Add-In

Concepts

Getting Started Programming Application-Level Add-Ins

Programming Application-Level Add-Ins

Office UI Customization

Change History

Date

History

Reason

July 2008

Added information about adding managed controls and smart tags to documents by using application-level add-ins.

SP1 feature change.