VSTO Alternatives [closed]

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What alternatives exist for VSTO?

What does managedxll do that VSTO does not - When would you use one vs the other

Google does not bring much up on this subject

This is more of an interview question - What are the pros and cons and both is the crux of the question here

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VSTO presumes you are using Visual Studio as your development platform, thus mainly targeting professional and corporate developers. 'Power users' who create macros and add-ins with VBA seem not to be the the target audience for VSTO.

If you are interested in add-ins for Excel, the native .xll add-ins have some specific advantages over VSTO, in particular they support creating high-performance user-defined functions. Libraries like ExcelDna (and ManagedXll which you mention) make it easy to create .xll add-ins for Excel using managed code. Contrary to what OmegaMan says, these .xll-based add-ins do not work through the Automation Add-in interfaces, support Excel versions from '97 to Excel 2010 and allow advanced features that VSTO does not support, like registration-free Ribbon and RTD support.

For creating add-ins for various other office applications, in particular for Outlook, you could also look at Add-In Express.

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Apples and Oranges....managedxll is for help building automation add-ins and is limited. It only targets office 2003 (AFAIK).

VSTO gives the developer the ability to write C# code directly against the interops of Excel, create smart documents, forms ribbons and add-ins in separate .net assemblies of the .net language of one's choice.

Plus no runtime license is required for use of VSTO.

HTH