Share code between office applications - c#

I have written two addins , 1 for excel and 1 for word. However these addins have a lot of duplicates: Database handling, file handling,array handling which I would like to update 1 place instead of two.
We do have access to sharepoint, and could get access to visual studio. The thing is that people like to use file explorer and find the correct word or excel file, then open it then press a button inside the application which then should do things with the active document.
This is why we haven't written it as a .Net application yet, because that requires that people browse for the file inside the .NET application uless I am mistaken.
Is it possible to make an Addin which works both excel and word, or a dll? AnAnother important thing is that it should be easy to roll out a new version to the user, like stored on a network drive or similar.

Yes it is possible
The Hard Way
You can create a .Net DLL and call it from VBA. In visual studio a lot of people use Unmannaged Exports by Robert Giesecke to create DLLs that don't need to be registered (that way the DLL can be shipped with your document, and as long as it can be found you can use it).
Alternatively you might be able to do it manually as shown here by Hans Passant.
The Easy Way
Once the DLL is created you can declare it in a VBA module the same way you declare any other DLL for Late Binding and then call it from your code.
OR if you're happy to create the DLL and add it as a reference (possibly less portable) you can make it COM visible and register it for COM Interop in Visual Studio; this is probably the easiest way to go because you can then use Early Binding.
This is a walk through that might help: http://www.geeksengine.com/article/create-dll.html
But if you want to store the DLL on a network drive, well it might be that you really want to look at doing it the 'hard way', in which case look here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5934745/3451115 and here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687915.aspx

Related

Integrating C# code in Excel

I have an Excel file with many different, but very similar, userforms.
When I click on a cell in my worksheet a specific userform will open according to the cell text.
I wanted to know if there is a way to add a C# form to Excel which will behave as a userform? Since the visual studio interface is much simpler and a lot more generic than VB.
I know you can create C# add-in's for excel, but these are used to add buttons, ribbons, etc.
what I need is a way to add a dll which will be activated when clicking on a cell, this dll must be easy to update, and it should not include installation (like the add-in's).
I got the following answer from a different forum:
You have some possibilities
1) Actually Excel (and practically all Office application) support Add-ins. Thus you could make a legacy excel add-in. There are several tutorials out there, but this is not the simplest one.
2) An other interesting approach exceldna.codeplex.com/[^]
3) You can call managed code from excel vba, but it is not the wisest one, since vba runs in a rather undeterministic way. Start here: richnewman.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/…^]
4) Interop Forms Toolkit[^] might be also an alternative – user2134909 2 mins ago edit
I haven't thoroughly examined them, but they seem promising

check for existence of office.interop assemblies

I'm working on a c# project where I get input from Office documents, and right now I'm using MS Office for it. This simply means the MS Office interop components have to be present on the user's PC for this to work.
However, I might implement OpenOffice.org into it too eventually, and in that case I want my application to be automatically able to choose which program to use to process files based on what is available.
Is there any simple way to test whether certain references I made in my project are actually available on the computer that is running the program? I really don't want to release different binaries based on Office types.
What about a simple try catch block?
If the DLL is not present on the system then the most basic call will return a meaningful error. In that particular case you can load another class that will handle a different word or speadsheet processor

Accessing C# user settings from a C++ Application

I am writing a C# program in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 that stores some information inside of the local user settings like so:
Properties.Settings.Default.userActive.Add(connection.Active);
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
I also have a Visual C++ application that would like to read these stored user settings. Is it possible for my Visual C++ application to read the C# application's user settings?
Similarly, how would I go about accessing the local user settings directory in C++?
It seems like there is no Microsoft sanctioned way to do what I am attempting to do. In case anyone else comes across this I will briefly explain what I've decided to do. Here was a helpful guide. I am ultimately just populating an xml file from the C# and placing it within the users AppData folder located at:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData);
I am then using my C++ to locate it using:
TCHAR myCharArray[MAX_PATH];
SHGetFolderPath(NULL,CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA,(HANDLE)-1,SHGFP_TYPE_DEFAULT, myCharArray);
I then parse the XML file using C++ and read in the settings. This was a much more manual process than I would have liked, and leaves room for a lot of error unfortunately. Anyways, thanks everyone and good luck!
You can make the c# class COM callable through .NET COM Interoperability and COM callable wrappers.
Check out
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/deeptanshuv/archive/2005/06/26/432870.aspx

Embedded a *.exe into a dll

does somebody know how can I embedd an exe file into a dll ?
I have a tool which is an exe file that I call from c# code.
The thing is that I want to have 1 dll containing this tool (exe file) and the dll containg my c# code.
Is it possible to embedd this exe file within the resources?
Thx in advance
Sure it is. You can add any file as RC_DATA in application as resource. But I believe you will need to extract it to disk first before calling it!
Which IDE/Language you are using?
[EDIT]
Sorry! you did mention that you are using C#.
Add a resource file to you application (right click application in IDE and select "Add new item".
Use the toolbar in resource editor to add an existing file.
Then extract the exe whenever required by calling code something like:
System.IO.File.WriteAllBytes (#"C:\MyEXE\", Resource1.MyEXE);
It's worth baring in mind that your uses may not be too happy about you doing this. Embedding an executable that they've got no control over into a DLL that you'll extract and run will probably make people worry about the running a Trojan on their machine.
It's better to leave the .EXE in the filesystem and be transparent about what your application is doing.
You can load an Assembly from a byte[]. This can be obtained via the ManifestResourceStream of an embedded resource.
An alternative may be to not embed the .exe itself, but rather include its functionality in the dll, and use rundll32[1] to execute it.
On a side note, remember that when you pull a file from your resources to disk and then execute code on it, you may trigger Windows Data Execution Prevention - basically, Windows tries to automatically detect if something is supposed to be code or data, and if it looks like data (which a resource would), then it will prevent that data from being executed as code.
This becomes a particularly sticky issue if your .NET assembly is going to be used over a network instead of from a local drive - there are all sorts of .NET security configurations that might prevent this from working correctly.
Another option, and not knowing the details of your project, take this with a grain of salt: add a .exe.readme file to your install that describes to any curious users or IT people why there is an executable they weren't expecting in the installation directory :)

How To Store Files In An EXE

Alright, so I'm working on programming my own installer in C#, and what I'd like to do is something along the lines of put the files in the .exe, so I can do
File.Copy(file, filedir);
Or, if this isn't possible, is there another way of doing what I am attempting to do?
I wouldn't code my own installer, but if you truely want to embed files into your assembly you could use strongly typed resources. In the properties dialog of your project open up the "Resources" tab and then add your file. You'll then be able to get the file using:
ProjectNamespace.Properties.Resources.MyFile
Then you'll be able to write the embedded resource to disk using:
System.IO.File.WriteAllBytes(#"C:\MyFile.bin", ProjectNamespace.Properties.Resources.MyFile);
Honestly, I would suggest you NOT create your own installer. There are many many issues with creating installers. Even the big installer makers don't make their own actual installers anymore, they just create custom MSI packages.
Use Mirosoft Installer (MSI). It's the right thing to do. Make your own custom front-end for it, but don't recreate the already very complex wheel that exists.
UPDATE: If you're just doing this for learning, then I would shy away from thinking of it as "an installer". You might be tempted to take your "research" and use it someday, and frankly, that's how we end up with so many problems when new versions of Windows come out. People create their own wheels with assumptions that aren't valid.
What you're really trying to do is called "packaging", and you really have to become intimately familiar with the Executable PE format, because you're talking about changing the structure of the PE image on disk.
You can simulate it, to a point, with putting files in resources, but that's not really what installers, or self-extractors do.
Here's a link to Self-Extractor tutorial, but it's not in C#.
I don't know enough about the .NET PE requirements to know if you can do this in with a managed code executable or not.
UPDATE2: This is probably more of what you're looking for, it embeds files in the resource, but as I said, it's not really the way professional installers or self-extractors do it. I think there are various limitations on what you can embed as resources. But here's the like to a Self-Extractor Demo written in C#.
I'm guessing here, but if you are trying to store resources in your application before compilation, you can in the Project Explorer, right click a file you would like to add, chose properties and change the type to Embedded Resource.
You can then access the embedded resources later by using the instructions from this KB:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319292
in case you simply want to store multiple files in a single file storage (and extract files from there, interact etc.) you might also want to check out NFileStorage, a .net file storage. written in 100% .NET C# with all sources included. It also comes with a command line interpreter that allows interaction from the command line.

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