Creating Managed Add-ins for Microsoft Office Project 2003: Overview

If you develop COM add-ins for Microsoft® Office Project 2003 using Microsoft Visual C#®, Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET, or Microsoft Visual C++, you can combine the rich object model of Project 2003 and the .NET Framework with the language features of C#, Visual Basic .NET and Visual C++. However, combining COM objects with objects from the .NET Framework can present a few challenges. This article provides guidance for combining these technologies when creating add-ins for Project.

The article assumes that you have created Microsoft Office COM add-ins before. See the Creating Office Managed COM Add-ins with Visual Studio .NET article if you are new to creating COM add-ins.

The sample add-in accompanied by this article, MyProjectAddin, connects to Microsoft Office Project 2003 on load, exposes itself through Project's menus and toolbars, and brings up a Windows form when its menu or toolbar button is clicked. The topics in this article delve into the details of creating and deploying a simple Project add-in.

The MyProjectAddin sample uses the Shared Add-in template in Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET to quickly create a managed COM add-in for Project 2003 in the Visual Basic .NET programming language. The Shared Add-in template provides a skeleton of code with a lot of common functionality built in. It provides the deployment project, sets up the load behavior, and delivers a smoother design-time experience than a 100% hand-rolled extension. Whenever you are creating an add-in for Project, you should consider using this template because it can greatly simplify the creation process, registration, and deployment of the add-in.

Download   Download the MyProjectAddin sample from the Microsoft Office Project 2003 SDK (pj11SDK2003.exe) available from the Microsoft Download Center. The file contains all of the topics and source code samples for the Microsoft Office Project 2003 Software Development Kit, including the MyProjectAddin sample files.