Developing Microsoft Word add-in for MAC

Question

I have developed a small add-in for Microsoft Word 2011 in VB.net using VS2012. I would like to port the functionality to Mac users. Can you tell me how can it be done?

I have already read these posts:

• Developing Word add-ins for Macintosh
• VB macro or office addin for mac

But they are referring to Word 2008/2010 where it wasn't possible. I know that since Word 2011 it's possible to use VBA on Mac. But I cannot find any documentation how to use it - all links pointing to msdn/microsoft pages don't exist anymore (like the ones mentioned here: Where can I find the Mac Office 2011 developer details?).

Do you have any resources (documentation, tutorials, books) about the topic?

If it's not possible using VB.net I can switch to C#, but I haven't seen any posts about C# support for MS-office for mac.

Answer 1

The short answer is that you cannot use Visual Studio to develop add-ins for MS Word 2011 and you'll have to use VBA within Word. I assume in your question you mean VB.net in VS2012 not VBA (Visual Basic for Applications is the code written within the Office programs themselves and can't be written in VS). Since VB.net and C# use the .Net framework which is not available for OSX, it is not possible to use VS.

The best you can do is write your VBA code in a Word template (ie .dotm) that exposes your macro through a toolbar (you can't modify the hybrid ribbon in Office 2011). You'll probably also have to use AppleScript (or even C/Objective-c) to make up for some of the short falls in Mac VBA. Things like FileSystemObject, ActiveX controls don't exist and File Dialogs are limited so if possible you'll need to find AppleScript equivalents (which can easily be run from VBA).