Comparing Microsoft Office VSTO and Web add-ins

In this video, I show you the main differences between a Visual Studio Tools for Office add-in and a Web add-in. This video is intended to get you familiar with the technology and how it works and is not a programming guide.

[@kumarapush2221]

I literally love you for this clean explainer video. It is so much organized. I just cant thank you enough.

[@williamwhite6610]

This is a great video! I've programmed against Office using both VBA and VSTO. I've only recently starting looking at the JS API. This video gives a MUCH better overview of the API than other videos I have looked at. My feeling after watching this is "NOW I understand how the JS API works!"

[@babatundeonabajo]

Amazing tutorial even after 6 years since it was published. This is one of the few videos that dealt with the issue of "contact the administrator". I found it very odd and there are very few resources online that deal with this so bravo!

[@raidtheferry]

May be 7 years old but you just helped me out quite a lot thanks!!

[@waynefl76]

Fantastic video! I really needed this overview.. THANK YOU!

[@mafazpx]

Thank you very much for the explanation.
We are in the process of exploring ways to develop and deploy a Word Add-in by plumbing in our legacy code. It would be interesting to see how the add-ins could be dynamically loaded as we load the Word Instance as we launch it from a Web Application.

[@miguel4063]

Great video!!! Thank you for putting it together!

[@mahboobalam5689]

Good tutorial for the beginners. Thanks a lot.

[@antonarbus]

thank you for the video, great explanatory skills

[@TechGenix]

Thanks Anton and I'm glad you liked the video!

[@binaryblu9298]

After I finished designing the ribbon for Word 2016 with VS2017, I compiled it into the dll file, how to add it to the ribbon on another machine? Thank you

[@tubez29]

thanks for explaining the differences. In terms of properties and functions that you can use for interacting with Word, are both methods more or less comparable? For example, say that I want to know what pages have footers, and what margins are used, and even more advance stuff like looking at sentence structure, and grammar. I feel that VSTO is better integrated with Word API. I know you could probably extend it with REST API to augment functions, but is that a sound architecture?

[@lucasbarros5903]

Thanks for the video, now i know what to use on my automations!

[@DevarshiDavessj4]

awesome tutorial (y) ... can we make it in vs 2012?

[@khushiss]

How to deploy Web AddIn? Would the Web-AddIn work for Office Desktop apps?

[@Grokfyr]

awesome video... THX... helped a bunch

[@TechGenix]

Grokfyr glad to help!

[@ravinigam9027]

Hi Can anyone tell me ... can i use web api to get data and do manipulation of data in excel add in ??

[@hippopotamus86]

I'm up to the part where you run the plugin without Outlook with the sample tab and button, but mine doesn't show the tab or button. I can see the addin is running from within Outlook though.

[@user-hc8zr1tv4h]

I'm use "Visual Studio 2019" works fine!

[@justindehorty]

Go to the "Ribbon1" Properties menu and set the "RibbonType" property to "Microsoft.Outlook.Explorer." Everything covered in this video should then work after that.

[@ryderstout7358]

@@justindehorty Saved me a headache, thank you!

[@user-hc8zr1tv4h]

Very good!

[@vinodbhumireddy9853]

we can call WebAPI in button click?

[@TheWatchover07]

I am trying to do the same example in Outlook. However, I can not see the new ribbon in my Outlook. Why is it not visible in outlook?

[@justindehorty]

Until I read this comment, I was starting to think I was the only one who had this ridiculous issue. Apparently, you first need to go to the "Ribbon1" Properties menu and set the "RibbonType" property to "Microsoft.Outlook.Explorer", which is NOT the default value for this field. I couldn't find this answer anywhere on RUclips or in Microsoft's official documentation, which is pretty mind-blowing. // end semi-rant

[@martinpintado2101]

Hi Justin. I'm trying to program an add-in for outlook too using VISTO but I'm quite lost, could you share with me any example of an outlook add-in you have programmed. Thanks in advance.

[@dante2000xx]

In my VS i cannot see the option for web add in, any idea why?
Im using VS 2017

[@vikas070486]

you need to install the word packages when you installed VS. this is optional, so might be you have uncheck this option but you can get this option to enable by simply update your VS.

[@eduactivity]

How to deploy this project on IIS Server

[@meisammofidi13]

excellent!!

[@TechGenix]

Glad you liked it, Meisam!

[@neouia777]

Thanks I search for this tutorial for long time please make tutorial to explain both VASTO and javascript for office Thank a lot and also they are any way to devolop MS office add on with python thanks 🌹💫😊

[@alsecen9871]

Nothing for VSTO VB?

[@hrishikeshgalphade3938]

Thanks

[@this-is-bioman]

The new js API might be an interesting option in future but currently it's still too limited almost as it was experimental. Not sure where Microsoft is heading with it. They even rejected to implement a print API and let you fiddle with some strange services to send the document to... printing a single Excel sheet on the other hand is a complete mystery.

[@UNNIE2363]

Very true, if you want to do anything complicated like header footer manipulation, adding shapes etc, you will have to use ooxml in web addin world.

[@Popart-xh2fd]

But if Web add-ins require a server then that means it isn't a replacement for VSTO, because VSTO can work Offline while Web add-ins can't!

[@vesogry]

Office.js is so freaking irritating. It's unintuitive, hard to start, and no good tutorials.