Do Visual Studio Community editions support Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)? Add-in designer doesn't show up

3
votes

I had Visual Studio 2015 Community and installed Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2015.

I selected File -> New -> Project.

From the New Project dialog, I selected Templates -> Office/Sharepoint -> VSTO Add-ins -> Word 2010 Add-in because I have Microsoft Word 2010 installed on my laptop and I would like to create an add-in to target it.

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Clicking the Ok button opened up ThisAddin.cs in the editor.

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I could even bring Visual Studio to show me the ThisAddin.Designer.xml and ThisAddin.Designer.cs files.

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However, I could not open the add-in in the designer mode. Not only was there no designer, there was no sight of the Designer menu item either in the View menu on the toolbar nor in the context-menu when I right-clicked ThisAddin.cs. Also, the Toolbox did not display any items for me to use.

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The same thing happened after I installed Visual Studio 2017 Community and selected Office Tools to be installed during the installation process.

That makes me wonder if I am doing something wrong or if the Community editions do not support VSTO?

1
visual-studiovisual-studio-2015vstooffice-interopvisual-studio-2017

1 Answers

3
votes

Yes community edition supports VSTO. If you want the designer you should add a ribbon to your project. Right click project in the solution explorer --> add a new item --> VSTO --> Ribbon.

There is no designer by default since your are not forced to use it.