Add-in Express for Office and Delphi VCL is the first visual tool for writing a COM add-in, smart tag and RTD server in Delphi. It completely supports these technologies and makes them very comfortable for programming extensions for all available Microsoft Office versions across 2000 through Microsoft Office 2019 32-bit and 64-bit.

Visual designers: you write functional code only
Add-in Express for Office and Delphi is entirely based on the Rapid Application Development approach and empowers you to develop professional plugins for Microsoft Office with a couple of clicks. The programming model and run-time code of Add-in Express are based on Delphi VCL, and they make your add-ins, smart tags, Microsoft Excel RTD servers and user-defined functions commercial class and feature-rich.

Add-in Express generates COM-based projects that contain all necessary functionality for Microsoft Office add-ins or smart tags and centralize all technology-specific components through visual designers and RAD modules. More about Office Ribbon designer.

Add-in Express works with all versions of Delphi, from XE2 to XE8, and target all main applications in the Microsoft Office suite including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.

Microsoft Office extensibility and Add-in Express
Add-in Express for Office and Delphi VCL supports all types of application-level customization for Microsoft Office 2019 - 2003 (32bit and 64bit), including COM Add-ins, smart tags, Excel RTD servers and Automation add-ins. For each plug-in type Add-in Express supplies you with effective project templates, Office-optimized Delphi components and visual designers that implement all necessary technology-specific features.

Office COM add-ins
Add-in Express for Office and Delphi implements all COM-interfaces required by the COM Add-in specification such as IDTExtensibility2 and IRibbonExtensibility. It delivers components and designers for standard customization of the Office GUI (menus, toolbars, ribbons, etc.) as well as for enhanced customization, e.g. Advanced Outlook Form and View Regions. Finally, using the built-in Office Automation Server components and specially-designed event helpers, Add-in Express provides access to Office objects and their events.

COM add-ins based on Add-in Express work on all Office applications supporting this technology, namely:

Excel 2000 - 2019
Outlook 2000 - 2019
Word 2000 - 2019
PowerPoint 2000 - 2019
Access 2000 - 2019
Project 2000 - 2019
Publisher 2003 - 2019
Visio 2002 - 2019
OneNote 2010 - 2016
InfoPath 2007 - 2013
MapPoint 2002 - 2013
FrontPage 2000 - 2003
Office smart tags
For Office smart tags, Add-in Express supports both versions of the Smart Tag technology by implementing the ISmartTagRecognizer and ISmartTagRecognizer2 interfaces and allows you to create static or dynamic recognizers (stand-alone smart tags or smart tag libraries). A smart tag project based on Add-in Express can include one or several smart tags, and each of them may contain its action list and one or several recognizable words (phrases, masks, etc.) or realize a dynamic recognizer. See an example of creating smart tags in Delphi.

Smart tag projects based on Add-in Express work on all Office applications supporting this technology, namely: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook 2002 and higher.

Excel RTD servers and user-defined functions
In addition to common Office plug-ins, Add-in Express supports two Excel-specific extensions: real-time data servers and automation add-ins. An RTD server can make Excel a client for any real-time data sources. RTD projects based on Add-in Express are inprocess-servers (DLLs) and may contain an unlimited number of RTD topics. Automation add-ins allow you to create custom functions that the end-user can use in formulas on his workbooks. See how to develop RTD servers and Excel Automation add-ins step-by-step.

Both technologies work on Excel 2002 (XP), 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and Excel 2019.

The best platform for your Office plug-ins
The fact is that VB6 is not supported by Microsoft any longer while it was one of the best platforms for Office customization. Microsoft's attention has turned to the .NET Framework, VB.NET and C#. Office extensions are becoming overgrown with more and more additional technologies that complicate Office development, encumber deployment and slow down the performance of Office solutions. Office developers definitely need a better alternative.

Today the bundle of Delphi and Add-in Express can become the best platform for your Office extensions due to a perfect Delphi compiler that produces fast and compact Win32 and Win64 binaries, and Add-in Express components that make Office development comfortable and enjoyable. See a sample Office COM add-in project in Delphi.

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