Category: Office Development

Disabling your Web Add-in if you have an Equivalent COM/VSTO Add-in

David E. Craig3 Comments

In previous post, I described how you can add code to your VSTO/COM add-in to disable your Web Add-in loaded from maniferst via the Office Portal:
Removing Web Add-in Ribbon Customization in Outlook for Windows (theofficecontext.com)

Well with Outlook for Windows, Office 365, version 16.0.13728.36136, you can now disable your Web Add-in via Policy settings.

Download Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Office 2019, and Office 2016 from Official Microsoft Download Center

Here is the path in the policy editor for this setting:

Once in the policy editor, you would set the value. If your OfficeJS Web Add-in has a GUID of {c5bc7737-0d79-4302-9e73-2a614941e914} and the COM add-in is called “My Full Featured Outlook Add-in“, you would set the values like this:

Specifically, the registry key it puts in place is this:

PATH: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\addins\equivalentcomaddin
KEY (string/REG_SZ): {OfficeJS GUID}
VALUE: Prog.ID

For example, if I have an Outlook Web Add-in called “My Outlook Add-in” and it has the following manifest entry:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OfficeApp 
          xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/appforoffice/1.1" 
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
          xmlns:bt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/officeappbasictypes/1.0" 
          xmlns:mailappor="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/mailappversionoverrides/1.0" 
          xsi:type="MailApp">
	<Id>c5bc7737-0d79-4302-9e73-2a614941e914</Id>

Let’s say I have a full VSTO add-in called “My Full Featured Outlook Add-in” and it is registered as the following:

If you were to look at the Policy key after it is set you would have an entry like this:

KEY: {c5bc7737-0d79-4302-9e73-2a614941e914}
VALUE: My Full Featured Outlook Add-in

If it were an older traditional COM Add-in, like the top item: AccessAddin.DC, then it would look like this:

KEY: {c5bc7737-0d79-4302-9e73-2a614941e914}
VALUE: AccessAddin.DC

That is all you have to do if you have the newest builds of Outlook for Windows. 

NOTE: Coming later in the year, will be an option to add this entry to your Web Add-in Manifest file the way you can with Excel and Word. 
NOTE: This is all covered in the latest Office add-ins community call.

Office Open XML File Viewer

David E. Craig3 Comments

In case you did not know, Office files that end with an (x), like PPTX, XLSX and DOCX, or an (m), like PPTM, XLSM, DOCM are actually ZIP files. If you rename these files to .ZIP, you can open them up and see all the component that make up what is now an the Office Open XML File Specification.

Years ago I was working on a project where we were programmatically modifying Office documents using the Open XML Toolkit. I got sick and tired of renaming the files to .ZIP, looking inside, making corrections as needed, and then renaming the file back. So I created this tool. I used it – a lot, and then… Well, I forgot about it.

I recently started working on a project where I needed to quickly get into the contents of an Office file to see if the changes being made were correct. I also needed to do light editing of the internal XML parts at times. And I seemed to remember doing all this before. I searched and search and then I found this old project. I have been using it a couple weeks now and figured it might be a good thing to share with the community. So I published it on GitHub:

https://github.com/davecra/OpenXmlFileViewer

The details for install and usage are in the README.md. Once installed, you will have to register it for each file type. Once setup, you would right-click on the file, select Open With and then click OpenXmlFileViewer.

OpenXmlFileViewer on the PowerPoint (pptx) right-click, Open With menu

You will be able to browse the parts like you would files in File Explorer:

The Office Open XML File Viewer application window

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

OfficeJS: Get the current user’s Username

David E. CraigLeave a comment

While working on a customers proof of concept, we determined that we needed to know who the current user opening the add-in is. In most scenarios where there is a Store Add-in, you have the user log in. But we are in a enterprise environment, have an embedded taskpane and did not want to nag the user every single time they opened the document.

Outside of the BETA API set, there actually is not a way to do this in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. In the current BETA API (soon to be released), is the new Single sign-on (SSO) API. Detailed here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/develop/sso-in-office-add-ins

I know, I know… you do not want to have to have the user sign-on and neither did we. But actually you do not need to. You make a call to getAccessToken() – after you have gone through the rather complex process of setting up your application in Azure AD – and in the returned token is the user information. Here is all you need for code to get to the username:

export async function getUserName() {
try {
let tokenData = await OfficeRuntime.auth.getAccessToken({ allowSignInPrompt: false, forMSGraphAccess: true });
var parts = tokenData.split(".");
var token = JSON.parse(atob(parts[1]));
return token.preferred_username;
}
catch (exception) {
console.log(exception.message);
}
}
view raw getUsername.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Office Web Add-in Debugging in VS Code

David E. CraigLeave a comment

Another recent announcement that has me excited is the ability to debug Office Web Add-ins directly from VS Code. Before this recent announcement, it was a hit or miss proposition. There was Visual Studio 2019, that did a pretty good job. But I liked the lightweight simplicity of VS Code. Visual Studio 2019 seemed too too heavy-weight. It’s hard to put my finger on how or why, but I really enjoy VS Code for Web Add-in development so much better. Except for debugging…

So, to debug, I actually did most of my dev/test in the web versions of Office (Excel online, Outlook online, etc.). Then came the Edge Developer Tools Preview which helped debug task pane add-ins in the full clients. But that did not help with things like the On Send event in Outlook or other UI-less functions. So, it was a struggle at times.

Now that has all changed!!!

The process is a tad more complicated than I like, but it does work. Essentially, you need to:

  1. Run VS Code as administrator
  2. Install the extension in VS Code by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + X and searching for the “Microsoft Office Add-in Debugger”
  3. Add the following code to the .vscode\launch.json file to enable Office Debugging in your project. You will need to update line #7, and replace the uppercase HOST text with the host application for your Office add-in.
{ 
   "type": "office-addin", 
   "request": "attach", 
   "name": "Attach to Office Add-ins", 
   "port": 9222, 
   "trace": "verbose", 
   "url": "https://localhost:3000/taskpane.html?_host_Info=HOST$Win32$16.01$en-US$$$$0", "webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}", 
   "timeout": 45000 
}

NOTE: If you create a new Office project with Yeoman, you will not need to add this line, it will be part of the default template going forward.

  1. Press CTRL+SHIFT+D to then open the Debug pane, select Attach to Office Add-in option from the drop down list at the top of the pane, and press F5 to start debugging.
  2. You can now set breakpoints, see variable values, etc.
Attach to Office Add-ins menu option

Detecting Print in Outlook (VSTO/C#)

David E. Craig1 Comment

This is a common problem in Outlook. You might have tried to override the Ribbon settings for Print in Outlook to find that your code never gets run when the user clicks Print.

There is also not any events in the Outlook object model to detect Print either. So if you need to detect the user pressing the print button, you are out of luck.

While it is still not possible to detect the print button being pressed, you can at least detect when the user has selected the Print tab on the backstage.

The following code uses a background thread and a series of Windows API calls to FindWindow/FindWindowEx to detect when the Print tab on the backstage is opened:

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string lpClassName, string lpWindowName);
[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern IntPtr FindWindowEx(IntPtr parentHandle, IntPtr childAfter, string className, string windowTitle);
/// <summary>
/// Startup for Outlook Add-in
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender"></param>
/// <param name="e"></param>
private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
// we start by creating a background thread and look for a specific
// set of windows to appear, then we know the user clicked print
new Thread(() =>
{
while (true)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
CheckForPrint();
}
}).Start();
}
/// <summary>
/// Checks to see if the user has opened backstage and
/// selected the Print tab
/// </summary>
private void CheckForPrint()
{
try
{
// depending on whether we have an inspector active, or the explorer
// active we will need to get the caption to FindWindow
string LstrCaption = "";
if(Application.ActiveWindow() is Outlook.Inspector)
{
// Active inspector caption
LstrCaption = ((Outlook.Inspector)Application.ActiveWindow()).Caption;
}
else if(Application.ActiveWindow() is Outlook.Explorer)
{
// Active explorer caption
LstrCaption = ((Outlook.Explorer)Application.ActiveWindow()).Caption;
}
// get the window handle
IntPtr LintHostHandle = FindWindow(null, LstrCaption);
if (LintHostHandle == IntPtr.Zero) return; // if we cannot find it – nevermind
// create a list of windows to find (in reverse order)
// 4) rctrl_renwnd32 – is the print preview window
// 3) NetUICtrlNotifySink – is whole Print options and preview
// 2) NetUIHWND – is the the entire print tab
// 1) FullpageUIHost – is the backstage page
Stack<string> LobjWindowClasses = new Stack<string> (
new string[] { "rctrl_renwnd32", "NetUICtrlNotifySink", "NetUIHWND", "FullpageUIHost" });
// recursive call back to find each window in the stack.
// if all of them are found, then present a message to the user
if(FindWindowStack(LintHostHandle, LobjWindowClasses))
{
MessageBox.Show("You have clicked on the Print Tab in Outlook.");
}
}
catch { }
}
/// <summary>
/// RECURSIVE
/// This function will take the window classnames in the provided stack
/// and then find each one in order via recursive calls. If all of them
/// are found – we return true = found
/// </summary>
/// <param name="PintHandle"></param>
/// <param name="PobjStack"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
private bool FindWindowStack(IntPtr PintHandle, Stack<string> PobjStack)
{
try
{
// get the window with the classname being popped off the stack
IntPtr LintNewHandle = FindWindowEx(PintHandle, IntPtr.Zero, PobjStack.Pop(), "");
if(LintNewHandle != IntPtr.Zero && PobjStack.Count == 0)
{
return true; // found it
}
else if(LintNewHandle!= IntPtr.Zero)
{
// found a window, but the stack still has items, call next one
return FindWindowStack(LintNewHandle, PobjStack);
}
else
{
// did not find it
return false;
}
}
catch
{
// oops
return false;
}
}
view raw DetectUserPrintInOutlook.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

easyEws v1.0.16 Published

David E. CraigLeave a comment

I have made a few minor updates to easyEws. First, was a fix for distribution lists with an “&” in the name. The second is a few minor JSDoc updates for better linting. And finally, I changed a couple forEach loops to traditional for loops for performance reasons.

I have published the update to NPM and to my GitHub.

Please let me know if you have any issues or questions.

Same Add-in Running Everywhere

David E. CraigLeave a comment

If you have followed my blog or the Microsoft Office Developer Blogs enough, you have heard over an over again how Office Web Add-Ins are truly cross-platform.

In working on a proof-of-concept I created a simplified Word Redactions add-in that is truly cross-platform. I have shared the entire project on my GitHub repository, so you can see how it works.

Here are the screenshots to prove it runs on every platform supported:

  • Windows
  • Mac
  • Web Browser
  • iPad
  • Word for iPad
  • Word Online
  • Word for Windows
  • Word for Mac

Migrating a VS2019 Office Web Add-in to VS Code

David E. Craig1 Comment

I find myself frequently converting Office Web Add-in projects I originally created in VS2019/2017/2015 over to VS Code. This is because VS Code has become my preferred development platform for everything Web based.

There is a trick to this and a few things you need to know:

  1. Your project in VS2019 (et. al.) has a completely different structure, so once you move things around, you need to change some references.
  2. If you use the Yeoman generator to create the shell of your new project, you need to know a little about webpack.

So, in the following sections we will cover what you need to do:

  • Copy over all the files
  • Update the references
  • Add web pack commands

Copy Files

  1. Run “yo office” and create a default taskpane add-in, with JavaScript and for Outlook. This will create your baseline project. You will open this project and delete these files:
    1. .\src\taskpanes\taskpane.html
    2. .\src\taskpanes\taskpane.js
    3. .\src\commands\commands.html
    4. .\src\commands\commands.js
    5. .\assets\*.* (delete everything in there)
  2. In your VS2019 project and then open your Manifest (highlighted in the image below). Select All and Copy everything from the manifest.
  1. Open your shell project in Visual Studio Code, open the manifest.xml and paste. Later we will update the references.
  2. Next, copy the VS2019 FunctionFile.html and FunctionFile.js files to the .\src\commands folder in VS Code, then rename both: commands.html, commands.js
  3. Next, copy your VS2019 taskpane.html and taskpane.js to the taskpanes folder in VS Code.
  4. If you are like me and also have dialogs, you can create a .\src\dialogs folder in VS Code and then copy the dialog.html and dialog.js from VS2019 to VS Code.
  5. Be sure to copy over any other supporting scripts you have. I created a folder called .\src\common in VS Code and copied those JS files from VS2019.
  6. Next, anything you have in the Content folder in VS2019 you need to copy to VS Code .\assets folder.

That is it for the copy part. Now for the manifest part.

Update the Manifest

At this point you need to update the manifest.

  1. Open the manifest.xml in VS Code and Press CTRL+H to open the Find/Replace dialog. Type in ~remoteAppUrl and replace it with https://localhost:3000. Then replace all instances.
  2. Next and this part is a bit more tricky, but you need to look at every single html pointer URL and verify that it points to the ROOT. Meaning if it was [~remoteAppUrl/Functions/FunctionFile.html] and then you did the Find/Replace, it became [https://localhost:3000/Functions/FunctionFile.html]. You need to update this to be just: https://localhost:3000/FunctionFile.html. This is because when you compile your project with Web Pack, it places everything in the root.
  3. Again, this is tricky, but every one of your base URL’s for images will need to be updated to point to the correct image in the ./assets folder.
  4. Once you have completed, you can press CTRL+~ to open the command console and type: npm run validate. This will tell you if there is anything wrong with your manifest.

Update the HTML files

Next you need to open up each of your HTML files: dialogs.html, commands.html (was called FunctionFile.html), and taskpane.html. etc. In each of these you will find a script that points to a respective JavaScript file and possibly other source files you copied over to the .\src\common folder. Remove all those script tags. Leave only the tags that point to online CDN’s. We will get to this in one of the following sections, but essentially Web Pack will put all the references in for you automatically at compile time.

Also, any images that you are referencing in your HTML with the <img> tag will need to be updated to point to the proper file in the ./assets folder.

Update the Commands.js (formally FunctionFile.js)

Now we need to get everything ready for Web Pack and that is where we start getting into some code. I will cover Web Pack in another post soon, but what it uses is a global namespace for the functions you call. So you MUST add this code to the bottom of the JS file:

/*************************************************/
/* REQUIRED BY WEB PACK – DO NOT DELETE */
/*************************************************/
function getGlobal() {
return typeof self !== "undefined"
? self
: typeof window !== "undefined"
? window
: typeof global !== "undefined"
? global
: undefined;
}
const g = getGlobal();
g.onSendEvent = onSendEvent;
g.onRibbonButtonClick = onRibbonButtonClick
/*************************************************/
/* REQUIRED BY WEB PACK – DO NOT DELETE */
/*************************************************/
view raw webpack _required.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub
Web Pack Required code

In your manifest you have specified the functions that will be called when the user clicks on a Ribbon button or Events that will fire such as OnSend in Outlook. Find those function and made sure they are added to the global namespace as shown.

Also, at the top of EVERY single JS file in your project you will need to add the following line:

/* global global, self, window, Office, console, myClass*/

When you start to edit these files in VS Code, there will be a whole lot of “red squigglies” for undefined items in the global space. For each of those that the syntax highlighter defines as such, you will add it to the global tag at the top of the file. Like this:

Undefined object

Update the Common JS Files

For the .\src\common files any function you want to be available in the global namespace, meaning you call it from one JS file to the next, you will want to add the same section above and make sure the function is specified.

NOTE: You will also want to do this for any global constants or vars that you want visible as well.

Update the Web Pack Config

Finally, we have to update the webpack.config.js. This is probably the most tricky part. What you need to do is locate the values for {entry} and make sure that every JS file in your project is represented:

entry: {
polyfill: "@babel/polyfill",
dialog: "./src/dialogs/dialog.js",
commands: "./src/commands/commands.js",
shared: "./src/common/shared.js",
common: "./src/common/common.js",
taskpane: "./src/taskpane/taspane.js"
},
view raw entry.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub
Web Pack {entry}

NOTE: This is critical to get correct and to include all JS file because if you do not do this, it will not work.

Now that you have all the entries in place you need to update the {plugins} section. You might need to create an extra module or two as well. By default you have one for taskpane and commands, but my example will show dialogs as well:

plugins: [
new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
filename: "taskpane.html",
template: "./src/dialogs/taskpane.html",
chunks: ["polyfill", "common", "shared", "taskpane"]
}),
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
filename: "dialog.html",
template: "./src/dialogs/dialog.html",
chunks: ["polyfill", "common", "dialog"]
}),
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
filename: "commands.html",
template: "./src/commands/commands.html",
chunks: ["polyfill", "shared", "commands"]
})
],
view raw plugins.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub
Web Pack {plugins}

Note how in each plug-in (the HTML file), there are “chunks.” These chunks are the references to each script tag that will be added at compile time. It is VERY important to make sure that you reference each file as expected.

Ready to Test

At this point you should be ready to test. If you manifest validated, you can now just press CTRL+~ to open the command console and type npm start.

If your solution successfully sideloads in Office, you should verify that your commands, events and taskpanes all function. If they do not here are some common issues:

  1. You did not properly reference your JS file in the webpack.config.js. Either defined as an {entry}, or as a chunk on a {plugin}.
  2. You did not add the required code at the bottom of the JS file for your functions to be defined in the global namespace, or you forgot to add one or more.
  3. Your manifest is not pointing to the right file. Remember, once Web Pack compiles your code, everything is in the root, except for the assets.

That is a lot, I am sure I missed a few things even though this post took me a while to write. If you have any issues with porting over your project and find there are some missing steps or something I can clarify more, please let me know.

Getting Started with OfficeJS

David E. CraigLeave a comment

If you are just getting started with OfficeJS, then this post is for you. I will assume you have some understanding of what Office Web Add-ins are. However, there is one very basic point I will demonstrate in this tutorial:

  • An Office Web Add-In is simply a web site and an XML “description” file. I detailed this in this blog post. And we are going to build on that.

So, you are brand new to OfficeJS, and want to get started. The first thing you need to do is get your development environment up and running. There is a script for that:

Microsoft Office Development Environment Script

NOTE: For more information on this script, please read my blog post.

Next, you will need to pull down the Web Add-in Side Loader tool. Keep this ZIP on your desktop. This will be used later in the steps below to make it really easy for you to install the Add-in to Excel. However, if you prefer to do the steps manually, see the link below. For more information on this tool, please see my blog post and/or the GitHub repository.

Now that you have the development environment setup, lets build your very first, super basic Excel add-in:

  • Create a folder on your desktop called “MyFirstAddIn”
  • Open Notepad and copy/paste the code from HERE, then click File, Save, name it “manifest.xml”, change the type to “All Files *.*”, browse to folder on your desktop, and click Save.

NOTE: In this step you created the manifest file. This file will be used to “install” the add-in into Excel. Essentially, it will tell Excel where the web page is for the task pane.

  • Close Notepad, then open it again. Copy paste this code HERE, then click File, Save, name it “home.html”, change the type to “All Files *.*”, browse to the folder on your desktop, and click Save.

NOTE: In this step you created the primary file for website. This one file contains both the HTML and JavaScript needed to make the taskpane load in Excel.

  • Now you need to side load the manifest and you do that by first opening the ZIP file on your desktop: Set-WebAddin (v1.0.0.0).zip and extracting the Set-WebAddin.exe to the “MyFirstAddIn” folder.
  • Press Window+R to open the run dialog, and type CMD and press enter.

NOTE: This will open the Windows Command Prompt which you will use to sideload the add-in and run it.

NOTE: The word “sideload” is a fancy way to say install it for only your instance of Excel. It is also known as Developer Sideloading.

  • Change the directory to the folder on your desktop with this command:
cd "%userprofile%\desktop\MyFirstAddIn"
  • Next, type this command:
Set-WebAddin -test -manifestPath "%userprofile%\desktop\myfirstaddin\manifest.xml"

NOTE: In this step you have sideloaded the add-in to Office. This essentially tells Office you have an added an Excel add-in via the information in the manifest file which, when loaded tells Excel everything it needs to know about it, including where to find it. If you prefer to do the sideloading steps manually, you can follow them here.

  • Now you are almost ready. Type this last command (that is a dot/period at the end, very important):
http-server .

NOTE: The above steps start a local the http-server on your computer so that it will serve the webpage in the browser from the folder (.) you are current inside. You can now test this by clicking this link.

  • You are now ready to go. Simply open Excel and a new Blank Workbook. Then on the Insert tab, click the down arrow next to My add-ins and click BasicAddin. It should look like this:
The BasicAddIn in the Developer Add-ins menu
  • Your add-in Task Pane should load.
  • Click in cell A1, type “Hello World!”, and then in your Task Pane, click the “Click here” button and you should see “Hello World!” in the bottom of the page.
  • Once you are done, you can press CTRL+C in the command prompt window to shutdown the server and then to uninstall the add-in you can use this command:
Set-WebAddin -cleanup -manifestPath "%userprofile%\desktop\myfirstaddin\manifest.xml"

And that is it. There are three things to note here:

  • You created your first web add-in.
  • You did not use VSCode or any Integrated Development Environment. You did this only with Notepad.
  • But as an added bonus – you have also installed VSCode and the tools you need to start doing more complex things with Office Web Add-ins.

JavaScript, HTML, Web, CSS, front-end, back-end, web server, ports, local hosts… some, if not all of these are new terms if you are just getting into this new world of the Web and Web add-ins. But it does not have to be that complicated. As I referred to earlier, the following posts should be your next two stops on your journey:

Getting started as an OfficeJS Developer

Start Developing in OfficeJS Today with ScriptLab

If you have any questions, please reach out to me.

easyEws v1.0.15 Released

David E. CraigLeave a comment

In this latest release I have incorporated my first community pull. A big thank you to Vijay Samtani for adding the sendMailItem. This new addition allows you to create a message to multiple recipients and with zero to many attachments.

Here is a link to the repository: https://github.com/davecra/easyEWS

You can references it in your code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="node_modules/easyews/easyews.min.js"></script>

view raw
easyewshtmlscriptline.html
hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And you can allow pull it down from NPM:

npm install easyEws