Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Office (VSTO) Power Tools v1 Released

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Office System Power Tools v1.0.0.0

"A set of developer tools that provide additional functionality useful in Office-based development. These tools include Visual Studio add-ins as well as standalone Windows Forms and console applications. The VSTO Power Tools also include a set of re-usable class libraries to simplify Office development."

From the VSTO Power Tools.docx;

Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) and Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) are released both with major Office releases and with mainstream Visual Studio releases. To meet the demands of frequent releases, we trim our feature set aggressively. Inevitably, this means that there are some features that we'd really like to release but are prevented from doing so by time constraints. This is where the VSTO/VSTA Power Tools come in. This is a set of tools that we’re releasing alongside Visual Studio to provide additional functionality. In order to release these tools in a timely manner, they undergo only the simplest of testing, and are therefore unsupported. They are freely downloadable from here.

Installing the Tools

The download consists of a zip file which includes three separate installer packages, as follows:

- VSTO_PTRibbonIDs.exe installs the Ribbon IDs Tool Window.

- VSTO_PTExtLibs.exe installs the Office Interop API Extensions and Custom UI Manager.

- VSTO_PT.exe installs all other power tools.

The Power Tools v1.0 Toolset

There are nine tools in the first release of the VSTO Power Tools, including two runtime tools and seven design-time tools, as described in Table 1.

Tool	Description	Type of Tool
Open XML Package Editor	A graphical treeview-based editor for examining and editing Open XML Package files (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents).	Add-in to Visual Studio.
Ribbon IDs Tool Window	A custom tool window that displays all re-usable built-in Office Ribbon IDs.	Add-in to Visual Studio.
Office Custom UI Manager	A set of classes for coordinating multiple instances of Ribbon, custom task pane, and custom form region objects.	Runtime class library and sample source code.
Office Interop API Extensions	A set of C# classes for handling parameterized properties and optional/named parameters, as well as for LINQ-enabling Office collection objects.	Runtime class library.
SharePoint Feature Sweeper	A GUI tool that cleans up unwanted SharePoint features from the developer's environment.	Standalone Windows Forms application.
SharePoint Workflow Package Generator	A tool to package a SharePoint workflow project so that it can be deployed.	Scriptable command-line tool.
VSTO/VSTA Pipeline Verifier	A GUI tool that reflects over custom pipeline assemblies to validate the complete VSTA pipeline.	Standalone Windows Forms application.
VSTO Developer Cleaner	A GUI tool that removes leftover build artifacts from the developer's computer.	Standalone Windows Forms application.
VSTO Troubleshooter	A diagnostic tool that examines a computer for the necessary prerequisites for running VSTO solutions.	Standalone Windows Forms application.

Open XML Package Editor

This is a Visual Studio 2008 add-in to allow parsing and editing of Open Packaging Conventions files, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Features include:

• Open any Office 2007 Open XML Package file or XPS Package file directly in Visual Studio.
• Intuitive, browsable tree view of the Package file.
• Open any XML part directly in Visual Studio's rich XML editor.
• Easy to use user interface for adding and removing parts and relationships.
• Import and export part contents to and from files.
• Detects when a Package file that is opened in Visual Studio is modified externally. Prompts user to reload without having to close any open XML part editors.
• Create new Office Packages from a set of templates using Visual Studio's File > New dialog.
  
  ..."

Lots of cool VSTO stuff to play with... I think the Open Package Editor is the initial coolest (much easier than renaming a DocX to ZIP and then exploring it that way...)