A .NET Assembly Linker for Microsoft Word 2003 Documents
VSTO Assembly Linker
VSTO Assembly Linker is a little utility that links Microsoft Office Word Documents to Visual Studio Tools for Office 2003 assemblies. This tool is essentially a .NET UI wrapper for the OfficeToolkit.Persistence ActiveX object. Download links are shown below.
The VSTO Assembly Linker allows Office “power users” to limit the surface area of Office Application exposed to .NET assemblies down to the document level. This visual interface is an option to those not fond of the command line and provides easy-to-understand visuals for documenting policies and procedures related to Microsoft Office System applications in the enterprise.
User Interface
The user interface (below) displays the four-step process involved in linking a VSTO Assembly:
Select VSTO Assembly… This command is used to specify the VSTO assembly to connect to an Office Word Document. The location to the assembly can be a Windows path, a URL or a UNC. To select local Windows paths click on the icon on the left or the ellipses button next to the first text box. A note to administrators: you may need to review the Code Access Security policy of the VSTO assembly with CASPOL.EXE. Please see “Selected Links to Resources” at the bottom of this document for more information.
Enter VSTO Assembly Name… This value is automatically entered when a local assembly is selected through the interface in the first step. In the case of remote assemblies, the name must be manually entered. This value corresponds to the AssemblyName.Name property and is usually the filename prefix of the assembly.
Select Office Word Document… This command is used to specify the Office Word document to link to. Note that this document can be in DOC or XML format. To select local Windows paths click on the icon on the right or the ellipses button next to the last text box.
To link the document, click on the Link! button in the middle of the form.
Known Issues
- The ellipses (…) in Menu items appear incorrectly on some Windows 2000 systems. This probably has something to do with ‘limited’ Unicode support in Windows 2000. This problem is of the rare case of a C# programmer concerned about Latin glyphs and typography!
- Limited testing. VSTO Assembly Linker has only been tested on Office Word documents linked to Visual Studio 2003 assemblies. It ‘should’ work on other Office documents and perhaps other VSTO assemblies.
- VSTO Assemblies can load multiple times when co-mingled with .NET COM Add-ins. In the rare case that a VSTO assembly is also used as a COM Add-in, it can be “hooked” into Office from two locations: via the COM Add-in and by the VSTO Assembly Linker. Use the Tools > Unlink Office Document… command to remove the VSTO Assembly Linker hook.
Future Enhancements
- Bulk operations. The ability to select an entire directory of Word documents for linking would be a nice touch. There is, however, the question of how the underlying COM object would hold up in stress tests.
- Predetermining the Code Access Security status of the VSTO assembly. A polite warning message about any possible security problems would be helpful.
Selected Links to Resources
| VSTO Assembly Linker (Setup Archive) | Download the VSTO Assembly Linker ZIP with Setup.exe. (Includes source code.) |
| VSTO Assembly Linker (Single Installer File) | Download the VSTO Assembly Linker MSI. (Includes source code.) |
| “How to: Link an Assembly to a Word or Excel File” | This article introduces the OfficeToolkit.Persistence ActiveX object. |
| “Persistence Control Methods” | Details the members of the unmanaged Persistence Control. |
| “Dsofile.dll lets you edit Office document properties without Office in Visual Basic .NET 2003 and in Visual Basic .NET 2002” | This ActiveX object is used to read the properties of Office Documents. It can also write these properties as well. |
| “How to: Grant Permissions to Folders and Assemblies” | Covers security issues with VSTO assemblies. |
| “Getting started with setup projects” | Hey! It can’t hurt to review “the basics.” |
| “A re-usable ‘about’ box for C# applications” | This article caused a generic About… box to be shared among all Songhay System Windows Forms projects. |
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