Using Office Functionality Inside of Visual Studio

When you create a document-level project, the document and the associated application are hosted inside Visual Studio so you can design and work directly with the document. When you have a Microsoft Office application open in Visual Studio, it generally works as expected. However, some of the application's functionality is different or inaccessible.

Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects for the following applications: Excel 2013 and Excel 2010; Word 2013 and Word 2010. For more information, see Features Available by Office Application and Project Type.

Document Protection

Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel offer document protection features that you can use in your projects. However, if document protection is enabled while the document is open in Visual Studio, it can prevent you from making some design changes. For more information, see Document Protection in Document-Level Solutions.

Information Rights Management

Information Rights Management (IRM) is available in Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel. IRM can help you prevent unauthorized people from viewing or altering sensitive information. However, IRM can also prevent your code from running. For more information, see Information Rights Management and Managed Code Extensions Overview.

Password Protection

Microsoft Office Word documents and Microsoft Office Excel workbooks can be set so that they cannot be opened by someone who does not know the password. Password protection is handled differently in Word and Excel, and can affect your development process. For more information, see Password Protection on Office Documents.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Open Office Solutions without Running Code

Concepts

Document Protection in Document-Level Solutions

Information Rights Management and Managed Code Extensions Overview

Password Protection on Office Documents