What is the difference between Microsoft Office Developer Tools and Visual Studio Tools for Office aka VSTO?
When I install the capability below, exactly which one of those two technologies am I using?
TIA.
3 Answers
6
votes
Visual Studio Tools for Office (or VSTO) is Microsoft's framework for managed add-ins in office applications, starting with Office 2003 with later versions supporting only Office 2007+.
Apps for Office is Microsoft's framework for HTML5 apps in office applications, starting with Office 2013.
Office Developer Tools are tools (usually under the form of Visual Studio project templates) to develop both VSTO and Apps for Office applications.
So when you create an "Excel 2007 Workbook" project as in your screenshot, you're using a VSTO project template installed as part of the Office Developer Tools.
3
votes
I found the more detailed answer.
Some information regarding Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio
Microsoft has released Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio. The tools have been available in preview form, and offer an alternative to Napa, Microsoft’s online lightweight app creator.
The extensions to Visual Studio can be used to write apps for Office, SharePoint and Office 365. Earlier versions of Office used Visual Basic for Applications as the programming language. The new extensions let you write apps for Office and SharePoint using web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, REST, OData, and OAuth.
Apps developed can be sold in the Office Store or used internally in your own company. The new release also lets you write apps that make use of SharePoint without having SharePoint on your local machine.
An app for Office is basically a webpage that is hosted inside an Office client application, and the apps you can write for Office and SharePoint come in three categories
those that appear in the task pane of an Office application; those that appear inside the content of an Office document such as a worksheet; and mail apps for Outlook and Outlook Web Access. These appear next to an open Outlook item, such as an
email message, meeting request, meeting response, meeting cancellation, or appointment. The basic components of an app for Office are an XML manifest file and a webpage. The manifest defines various settings and points to the webpage that implements the app UI and custom logic.According to the overview of the new tools, an app for Office can do pretty much anything a webpage can do inside the browser, such as provide an interactive UI and custom logic through JavaScript, or use JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery.
The second method of developing for Office 13 and 365 is to use Microsoft’s “Napa” online development tool, which Microsoft describes as a lightweight companion to Visual Studio. Napa is a free browser-based app for SharePoint that you can use to write apps.
While light-weight apps may meet some needs, it’s worth noting that Visual Basic for Applications and VSTO do both still work in Office 2013, the only drawback is that you can’t use them to create apps that can be sold in the Office Store.
For many existing Office developers, the push away from the rich client offered in Visual Basic for Applications is a disadvantage. The benefit of being able to sell them in the Office Store is only available if you have an Office 365 Developer Subscription, which includes a SharePoint Online Developer Site customized for creating and testing apps, and a Microsoft Seller Dashboard account to make your apps in the Store.
Some information regarding VSTO:-
VSTO, or Visual Studio Tools for Office, or Microsoft Visual Studio Tools is part of Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET tools suite and supports the Microsoft .NET Framework. It is used by developers to write code connecting Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Outlook applications. Developers using VSTO can employ C# or Visual Basic languages. It is an alternative to Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA
You can use the Microsoft Office developer tools in Visual Studio to create .NET Framework applications that extend Office. These applications are also named Office solutions.
The Office developer tools provide features that help you create Office solutions to suit a variety of business needs. The tools include project templates to help you create Office solutions by using Visual Basic or Visual C#, and visual designers that help you create custom user interfaces for your Office solutions.
