Please explain what an add-on is
Can someone give me a quick explanation of when I will be using the Visual Studio 2008 Outlook 2007 Ad-In Project Project? and how does that compare to creating a bunch of appearance macros directly in Outlook?
Basically, I want to have some kind of email reader application (with attachments) from a pop3 mailbox, do some filtering / editing / validation on the object / sender / content, and then if certain conditions are met, save the attachments to a local file. and then add an entry to the SQL Server database table (e.g. date / sender / subject / message).
There seem to be at least 10 different ways to do this .... so between perspective macro and VS Office Project, how do I choose?
I don't understand, if I build this solution as a Visual Studio add-in add-in, where does it run? Does it load into Outlook, runs as a separate process and communicates with Outlook? if Outlook doesn't work, does it start?
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An Outlook Add-in is a compiled component that uses the Outlook API to perform the required tasks. A macro / VB script is an interpreted script that actually uses the same API. The complementary approach is better if you want to deploy your functionality.
When you work on an Outlook add-in in Visual Studio, you will be creating a .NET component that integrates into Outlook written in C ++, therefore using COM. You have to be careful with managed / unmanaged types and deallocate the objects you retrieve from Outlook.
I recently finished just such a tool, but I decided to use the Add-in Express ( http://www.add-in-express.com/ ). These guys provide a layer of abstraction on top of the [complex] Outlook API and also provide great support if you get stuck.
In my case with the Express add-in, I "launch" by setting Outlook as the application command to launch in the project properties. Express add-in sorts the add-in installation in Outlook. So when I click Start, Outlook starts and the add-in is displayed, which can be debugged in the usual way. I'm not sure how VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) works in this regard - or at least I can't remember.
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