Develop Reference

Do I need to use Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word to create a report in Word?

I cannot seem to understand if I need Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word and how to get it. I know that it works together with Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word as seen in this article, for example:
Visual Studio extends the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Bookmark
object by providing the Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Bookmark host
control. The Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Bookmark host control behaves
like a native Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Bookmark, but has
additional events and data-binding capabilities. You can bind data to
a bookmark control on a document in the same way that you bind data to
a text box control on a Windows Form. For more information, see
Bookmark Control.
and that it enables you to add controls to a word document here, but I am not sure what the added value is (or if I need it).
I am developing an application that will generate a report of cyber security risks in a company (with primarily text and tables), and I am wondering what I have to use to make sure I can create my report properly (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word at the least).
Also, I do not really understand where to get the Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word from. I included the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word from NuGet easily, but I cannot find the other one in either NuGet or the Reference Manager. Because of this, I can not play around with this extra functionality and determine whether I need it in my project or not.
If you need more detail about my project to answer this question, feel free to ask.

No, you don't need to do Office Interop. Note that doing Office Interop requires you to have Office installed, also on the PC where you finally want to use it.
For a DOCX report, there are libraries like docx by XCeed (formerly a Github repo by the same author of docx on Codeplex) which can do things a lot easier. However, not all features might be supported.

VSTO Office Word Add-In Development Overview

C# expert and ASP.NET developer at heart, I find myself assigned now to an Office Add-In project. Luckily I have worked on several Excel Add-Ins in the past, but it's all blurry in my mind and I never had a chance to learn it in a well structured manner.
I was surprised to notice that SO and the whole Internet is lacking proper documentation for VSTO, Word DOM, OpenXML, etc. Lacking might be an exaggeration, but it's not abundant or well organized, that's for sure.
So what I'm looking for basically it's an overview, jump-start, or cheat-sheet, however you want to call it, containing a high level summary of the important parts of Office development.
PS: I will post my findings as well during my study.

My 2 cents
1) For latest WordArt in word, you would need OpenXML data to insert in Word. For Excel\Powerpoint, things are easier, you can just use interop.
2) Don't always trust the documentation. If you get an int instead of a bool return value, its mostly a value from MsoTriState. e.g. Bold property should return bool as mentioned here. But, instead it returns int. So, you have to cast it like "(MsoTriState)returnedBoldValue" to figure out what that integer actually means.
3) Installation can be a pain, consider using ready-made products like Advanced Installer(I found it cheaper than others). Others might be good or better as well.
4) Table styling can be a pain. Here is a list of the weird IDs you need to use it for Powerpoint.
5) TextFrame2 is still not valid for Word(even if the documentation might say otherwise). Its only available to Excel and Powerpoint. For Word, you have to use TextFrame.
6) WPF is not supported. But, I was able to get it working just fine after some research. You need to make sure to load resource dictionaries and they work fine as well.
7) Window Association was a bit of an issue(Parent - Child). WindowInteropHelper is your friend there.
For now, I will stop here. I will post some links later.

Document Level Architecture
Document
Template (essentially the same as Document from VSTO's perspective)
"Contained" by the Document.
Document contains the relevant information required to load the Add-In. Does not use Registry.
Application Level Architecture
Add-in
Directly plugged into and loaded by Office. Agnostic to Document. It is registered via Registry keys.
Ribbon
Supported by Visual Designer. It handles state automatically for you.
Ribbon X
It allows a much better customization. It's XAML like. No Visual Designer. It doesn't handle state. You need to handle state on your own, using callbacks.
Word DOM - Document Object Model
Application
Documents
StoryRanges
Range
Styles
Style
Windows
Window
Panes
Pane
It is nothing special, just another DOM, quite similar to the HTML one. However, it will take some time to get used with it and the information on the Internet is not as abundant as one might hope.
Manipulating the DOM
Directly
VSTO Controls: Windows Forms Controls, Host Controls
Windows Forms Controls
Powerful (supports .NET databinding for example) however they are not really part of Office so they will feel like a nut in a wall.
Host Controls (wrappers around the Interop Word objects)
Bookmark Control - old method, move on, nothing to see here.
XML Node & XML Nodes - deprecated. Removed in USA due to lawsuit.
Content Controls - The future! Support real data binding to hidden XML data field in the XML parts of the document.
Deployment
Click-Once - simple and fast. It adds the Registry entries for you. But it doesn't allow much customization. For example you can have a Click-Once project installed only to the current user.
Windows Installer, Installshield, etc. You need to add the .manifest and the .vsto files to the output. You need to add the registry keys.

Programmatic Report in Lightswitch

Is it possible to create a report programmatically in Light Switch?
I would like my customer to enter data and upon saving, a report is automatically generated and saved in a specific location.
Thanks

Lightswitch doesn't have built-in reporting. There are a number of options including third-party extensions,custom silverlight controls, SQL Server Reports, and integration with microsoft office. A summary of these options is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/jj635143.aspx If your program operates in a desktop environment using office may be the easiest. I've used http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/archive/2011/09/22/fun-with-the-office-integration-pack-extension-for-lightswitch.aspx as a guide successfully. You can even automatically save (as an office file or a PDF) to a specific file path. As far as I know, if you are running in-browser you will not be able to automatically save the file - but there are still plenty of options.

How can I launch a windows application from a webpage?

We have a company intranet and the powers that be think it would be nice to have a collection of icons/links representing the applications that most reps use (Outlook, Excel, few other apps).
The idea would be that if the application is installed, clicking the link/icon would launch the application on the client machine.
Anyone ever had a requirement like that and been successful implementing it?
Wanted to reach out to everyone before I go back and say no. Thanks in advance for any replies.

Make each button be a link to download a company template file for the given application. For example, the "Excel" button would download and the user should be prompted to open it with Excel.
For instance, try clicking one of the links here:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=template+filetype:xls
Linking to static files on the web server should be sufficient, so long as your server sends the correct MIME-Type or Content-Type.

You will probably have to adjust browsers' security settings to allow them to follow the links, but you should be able to use URLs of the form file:///C:\\Program Files\\Notepad.exe (You might prefer to use normal slashes / instead, as you don't have to watch out for how many copies of \ are needed to get past quoted string interpretation in whatever you're using to design the web page(s).

Using IE on a local intranet we have implemented this in an ActiveX control. Josh Pearce's solution works for those types of apps with MIME types, but not all apps you may wish to open would work this way.

How to create a help file

I want to create a help file opens when pressed F1 anytime. How to create it and include to code?

You are asking two things which are separate issues:
Create a help file.
This can be tricky depending on how you do it. There are many different options, some launch a web browser to a online help while others launch a help viewer of some kind. I have also seen people having simple help viewer implemented in simple controls like some kind of browser control or rich text viewer. To create a external file (like a *.chm file) I would use a commercial package like robohelp, there are SDKs from Microsoft, but packages like RoboHelp makes lift so much easier.
Launch the help
To get the help to be displayed you normally (in the case of an *.chm file or an web browser) need to launch the viewer program. The help SDK from Microsoft contains help for this, but you may also just lauch the program as any other program. Take a look at the System.Diagnostics.Process class.

If you want to create a CHM help file you may check out HelpNDoc which is a perfect tool to create PDF,HTML and CHMs instantly. If it comes to launching, mrz is also perfectly right.

There is a help SDK that microsoft provides
check it out:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms670169
Im assuming this is what your looking for?
you could set F1 to one of these HTML pages?

If your program is rather simple, a single HTML file opened in the user's default browser should be ok. But if Your application is a bit more complex, there's no real alternative to a chm file.
You might also include a PDF which describes common use-cases. (Like a book about using your software)

You can create your help in HTML format and for viewing, you can create a Form which has an embedded browser in it, and load the index (or whatever you call the first page) in the browser.