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I have a question about using VS to build a VSTO solution for Excel:
I built an Excel template for the company I work for and a significant portion of it relies on macros (for example, one of the functions is to use the drawing tools to automatically draw a picture of the product being manufactured and calculate weight of material required, calculate angles, size of mold, etc., and another copies the folder structure with material take-off, fabrication instructions, etc., and renames it match the sales order). Every project we do is a custom project so I'm constantly finding new requirements that didn't exist at the time I originally built the template. Sometimes the new requirements expose an error in my programming that I wouldn't have found otherwise. When this happens I not only have to change the template, but all project files created with the template - we have on average 130+ active projects at any given time and each project could have 1 or more product profiles (the largest I've had is 204). Needless to say, a minor change becomes a major undertaking.
I'm thinking about maybe revamping the whole thing as a VSTO project in VS but I'm not sure if it's really the best answer. The template resides on a shared network folder so anyone who needs access to it can do so. If I build the project as an VSTO Excel document, will it retain the code necessary to perform the core functions after the file is saved? (It's not uncommon for customers to make a change to the initial design, or add new profiles midstream so the ability to continue editing after the initial save is essential.) Will users need to install anything locally? Same question if I go the Excel Addin route. Which option would be best suited to the need? If I go either route, will a change in the code promulgate to the documents using the template or addin or I am looking at an exercise in futility when it comes to updating/correcting code?
Any thoughts, insights, tales of joyous success or dismal failure are welcome.
Thanks.
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Putting a business process entirely dependent on Office... Ewwww. As someone who has to deal with various Office plugins, this makes my skin crawl. Nobody, not one single vendor, creates and manages add-ins and extensions in a way that makes it easy.
But, an add-in is better than what you've got now. This is going to be an add-in to Excel. VSTO is not a project in itself, but it's the interface between your code and Office. Remember, it's an add-in to Excel, NOT YOUR TEMPLATE OR SAVED FILES. It's not saved in your Excel files!
This is something that every user that uses these sheets is going to have to install on their machines, and every time you update the code, they are going to have to uninstall the old version of the add-in and install the new one.
You're going to have to add repacking to your coding process to build the installer that's going to do the work of getting the add-in installed and registered. Oh, and one thing to make life easier. Install for machine, not the user.
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Thanks Dave. Everything you said is what I feared about the endeavor I was undertaking. If I have to continually update every active file or go to every machine and uninstall/reinstall when I make a change to the code it doesn't seem worthwhile to go through the effort and extra overhead. My goal is to make things more efficient, not add a new layer of complexity. What I've been doing is making changes as I see it's necessary, updating my template, and worrying about updating existing project files on an as-needed basis. I think I can stick with that process for a while.
For the record, it's not a business process entirely dependent on Excel ("Live by the spreadsheet, die by the spreadsheeet"). It just automates a process that we were doing by hand so we can move projects out to the shop in under 5 minutes instead of an hour.
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I used to make a living from people like yourself, power users who thoroughly understand their business processes and have put together a kludge solution that is not extensible.
I suggest you hire a developer who can interpret your business requirements and convert them into a database UI application. This does sound like a major job and because of the changing requirements it may be a long term rather than a short contract.
I suggest a relatively junior developer (not just a programmer) who has a passing knowledge of your industry. Then YOU will need to manage that process closely to insure a match to your requirements and future flexibility. Eventually you should end up as the primary user/support person with some occasional developer backup.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I'm actually a certified professional programmer and have been developing VB/VBA solutions since VB 2....I just never delved into Excel addins so asking those who have done so seemed likea good place to start before working on a potential major change. Asking for insight from those who have gone before isn't necessarily a sign of someone who doesn't have a clue. 
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Some of us, including myself, start our development lives in VBA/VB/Excel/Access and that is why I assumed you were a power user. So I would recommend moving to c# (many more examples on the web than VB) and database (SQL Server) and moving the solution out of Office tools to a professional platform.
Using Office as anything but a productivity tool is always going to give you grief. I have only met 1 professional Excel developer in the last decade and I was not impressed his ideas were rigid and his tools were inflexible.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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"
Will users need to install anything locally? "
Yes. I've some experience creating and deploying VSTO's. These addins are installed manually. The few ones I made were Controls (visual components with graphics in it) and some Excel Basic function extensions. You can define a Basic function in a VSTO. The sheet - or template - contains the basic code calling the VSTO. Buttons can be defined, to let the Excel create a graphics control on the sheet that is defined in the VSTO.
It works for 365. But this is not without pitfalls. The validity of a VSTO depends on the Excel version installed. If you want to use VSTO, see you standardize your users on one version of excel, before trying to distribute your VSTO. Once your VSTO is installed, it can be replaced by a newer version if needed, by manually uninstalling it, leaving Excel, entering Excel again and install the new version of the VSTO.
So, bottom line: nstead of these 130 sheets, your will worry about all these PC's that need to install your addin. An addin is not like a template on a share. It is NOT updated automatically of you correct errors in your VSTO code ! So in short, I'm afraid VSTO is not the solution to your problem. If you really want dynamic code support, use scripts instead, like Powershell or C-script. You could use Excel interop to generate sheets..
Anyway in the end this will give a version maintenance mess. What would be a solution.. is making an inventory of what you trying to visualize in these sheets, devise a data model, implement a database for all data involved. Then export views from that database and (only) visualise using VSTO. From Excel, you can access the database directly and queries are stored in the templates. Your data should reside in a central place, not in 130 Excel sheets.
And yes alas.. this is an expensive project.
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I am observing an issue with serializing/deserializing an object using CultureAwareComparer on .Net 4.6 .
On a system with .Net 4.6, I am able to serialize into a Soap XML having
<a2:CultureAwareComparer id="ref-15" xmlns:a2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/clr/ns/System">
<_compareInfo href="#ref-22"/>
<_ignoreCase>true</_ignoreCase>
<_options>IgnoreCase</_options>
</a2:CultureAwareComparer>
but when deserializing the same on a different system having .NET 4.6, I am seeing an error 'Member name 'System.CultureAwareComparer _options' not found.
Any suggestions on what could be causing the issue?
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Did you first try de-serializing it on the same machine where it was serialized?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Can a SOAP xml have ids that are not sequential?
For example, in below snippet, I have id = "ref-19" followed by id = "ref-21", is this acceptable?
<soap-enc:array id="ref-19" soap-enc:arraytype="xsd:int[2]">
<item>0
<item>0
<soap-enc:array id="ref-21" soap-enc:arraytype="xsd:int[2]">
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That has nothing to do with SOAP. That's an application thing. It's up to the application you're calling that determines if out-of-sequence ID's are acceptable.
SOAP is just a message formatting specification.
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I have figured out that when you base a program on Core3.1 or .Net5 you do not have all of it available to you. There are at least 2 switches you have to set to true in the csproj file: UseWPF and UseWindowsForms. Are there others? Most important, how do you know which features are turned on and which are turned off?
So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know.
modified 16-Feb-21 10:29am.
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Sounds like an alternative to the "project type". I expect (guess) you might be able to accomplish the same thing based on the references you add ... which requires knowing what dll(s) a given feature uses.
Previously, there was no explicit WPF window "class" library (project), but you could build one with the appropriate references included.
I have used Windows Forms chart controls in a WPF app; that would imply setting both switches (if they're not mutually exclusive).
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I have discovered on other .Net calls you need both switches. Still, I think there is a lot of overlap put do not know for sure. When you look at dependencies in Project Explorer, both switches show up as the same thing.
So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know.
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This is an update of the question:
I have figured out that when you base a new project on Core3.1 or .Net5 you may not have all of objects available to you. There are at least 2 switches you have to set to true in the csproj file: UseWPF and UseWindowsForms. Are there others? Most important, how do you know which objects are turned on and which are turned off?
Go to Object browser. This is a massive list of objects. It does show what rev of framework or core most objects are in. It does not show what switch it is under. Look up a class in Microsoft docs. Again you can get an idea of the version but no mention of the switches in csproj.
These switches are in MSBuild. The only thing I can find on them are at:MSBuild properties for Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Desktop - .NET | Microsoft Docs[^]
I know it may be a difficult question. I tried posting it on StackOverflow. I never get an answer and someone keeps marking it down. There is no comment as to why. Eventually it gets closed and hidden. I have heard that StackOverflow can be arrogant. I never understood why until now.
So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know.
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It depends on what you type on the "dotnet new" command line.
If you do "dotnet new wpf", the WPF option in the csproj file is already turned on for you. The same goes for "dotnet new winforms".
It sounds like you're doing something different on the "dotnet new" command line and having to make changes to the csproj manually to convert it to a different project type.
If you want to see the list of project templates, just type "dotnet new -l".
modified 22-Feb-21 20:49pm.
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As part of a solution we have a project that started from the Class Library template. It does not have any screens but does have some custom controls and other things that required the UseWPF and UseWindowsForms switches be turned on. There is really no template set up for this.
So many years of programming I have forgotten more languages than I know.
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Weird, but OK. I know I know nothing of your project, but I probably would have split that up into two separate libraries, one for each type of project, but I understand there are reasons I don't know about.
There is no list of configuration "switches" (UseWPF or UseWinForms) used in csproj files that I can find anywhere.
The last-ditch effort to find those would probably be to create a new project of each template type and go look in their csproj files for what's being used.
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i need instruction for creating simple game in .Net Core C#
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You're not going to get any with such an incredibly vague "question".
You didn't specify anything at all about the kind of game you want to build, the rules, interaction, ..., NOTHING AT ALL.
...and you expect an answer?
The only one you're going to get is Google for ".NET Core C# game tutorials".
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"I'm thinking of a number between 0 and 9 ..."
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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1. Learn C#
2. Learn .NET Core
3. Create a design
4. Develop the code from the design.
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I am a great fan of Imagelistview but one thing still evades me and that is the vertical scroll value and programmatically changing it rather than using the system vertical scrollbar due to cosmetics. You can use the EnsureVisible command to bring any item into the controls view but it lacks the feel of smoothness and control. If you let the control display the normal system scrollbars then you can use them to scroll through the imagelistview smoothly. What I want to be able to do is change the VerticalScroll value without using the mouse but I cannot find any command syntax that allows you to change it or read its current value.
Any help welcome, I have asked on the devs forum but remains unaswered.
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Dear All
I am sanding string to my instrument through tcpip socket protocol. String received at instrument correctly. I received string back from instrument also. but when i convert string in to hex value i get multiple Zero after my ETX (03)hex value.. can some one help me. code for your ref. is
Dim PORT As Int32 = Txtport.Text
Dim client As New TcpClient(Txtip.Text, PORT)
Dim stream As NetworkStream = client.GetStream()
' Translate the passed message into ASCII and store it as a Byte array.
Dim data As [Byte]() = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sndstr)
stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length)
' Txtrt.Text = sndstr
' data rec.
Timer1.Enabled = True
Dim Bytes As Integer = -1
Dim Buffer(1024) As Byte
Dim Message As String = ""
Dim ClientStream As System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream = client.GetStream
Do While Bytes <> 0
Bytes = ClientStream.Read(Buffer, 0, Buffer.Length)
Message = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(Buffer)
If Message.IndexOf("QE") <> -1 Then
' Found the end of the message...
Exit Do
End If
Loop
' Message = Message.Trim(Message.Trim(Chr(0)))
Txtrt.Text = Message
Dim ba() As Byte
Dim hexval As System.Text.StringBuilder = New System.Text.StringBuilder
ba = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(Message)
For i As Integer = 0 To ba.Length - 1
hexval.Append(ba(i).ToString("x2") & " ")
Next
RECEIVEDDATA.Text = (hexval.ToString())
I Rec. data 02 61 61 10 31 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 till the size of buffer
my end of msg. is 03 how to remove all 00 after value 03
modified 1-Feb-21 23:50pm.
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