Add-in X: toolkit to build add-in with Excel-DNA

[Amael Noel]

Hi,

I’ve been working for over 3 years with Excel-DNA for a front office team and during that time, I’ve created few libraries to help me in the implementation process. During the last few months, I’ve been focusing mainly on re-writing those libraries in order to share them as it might be useful for others.

Those libraries are published under the name Add-in X and it is an open-source project hosted on github (https://github.com/AddinX/). Those libraries are available as nuget packages:

•         AddinX.Ribbon: Fluent ribbon builder for Excel-DNA
  
•          AddinX.Bootstrap: Ease the use of an Inversion of controls container (only Autofac for the moment)
  
•          AddinX.WPF: Helper method to open a WPF window from Excel
  
•          AddinX.Logging: Wrapper to allow user to change easily the logging framework
  

Base on your needs, you might want to use one or more of the libraries. You decide what you want to include in your project.

You should have a look at the documentation (http://www.addinx.org) which contain examples on how to use the fluent ribbon, call a WCF service, open a WPF window, create a simple add-in with udf. You will also find the samples on the github page of the project.

•          Sample.Ribbon: All the controls that can be created with the fluent ribbon
  
•          Sample.WPF: A WPF wizard window launch from Excel and pushing back data to Excel
  
•          Sample.WCF: Calling a WCF service from Excel to say “Hello”
  
•          Sample.Addin: 2 simple add-ins
  

I will be pleased to get your feedbacks and suggestions.

I hope that you will find this toolkit useful!

Amael

[Gianfranco Di Tommaso]

Hi Amael,

first of all thanks for your work!

I'm trying to use your RibbonBuilder with custom images (not ImageMso) and I've a problem.

I've created a class to return custom images from resource file ( like your example) and I'm trying to assign it to a button, so, I've override OnLoadImage

         public override Bitmap OnLoadImage(string imageName)
        {
            return TestAddIn.ResourceImage.settings_icon;
        }

And assigned a fake image name to the .ImagePath just to call OnLoadImage

                         d.AddButton("Check Update")
                            .SetId("teCheckUpdate")
                            .LargeSize()
                            .ImagePath("test");

OnLoadImage was correctly called but the button didn't have any image. Have you any idea?

Thanks

Gianfranco

[Amael N]

Thanks for your feedback,

I've never used ResourceImage before, how does it work ? Could you try to use Properties.Resources.settings_icon, please. 

Could let me know the type of your image please ? is it a jpg or png ? If the extension of your image is a .ico you have to convert it to a bitmap format

try this line 

return

      PictureConverter.IconToPictureDisp(Properties.Resources.MyIcon);

I've founded this line on this page : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27526094/use-ico-image-in-ribbon

PS: I didn't had time to test it.

Please let me know if it works or not and I will investigate on it more

Thanks,
Amael

[kissinger chen]

Hi Amael,

I saw your class of "AddinX.WPF/AddinX.WPF.Implementation/ExcelDnaWpfHelper.cs"
It is interested to show dialog a window. Here is window is model so that user cannot click anything under the window, such as the excel cell.

Now I want to show a window modeless, so that user can input something from key board to the window, also user can click the excel range by mouse. Is it possible? and how?

Thanks.

[Amael N]

Hi Kissinger Chen,

It is a good practice to have a modal form and separate the manipulation on the WPF form with Excel.

It is possible to do what you want by sending a message to Excel from the WPF form and call the Excel method inputBox from the Add-in then send back the selected range to the WPF form. 

I will provide you some suggestions on how to do it by referring to the Sample.Wpf project.

You can include a button on your form that will send a message to Excel to ask a range to the user. Inside the class WpfInteractionController you will call a method from a class that contain the Excel Application (ExcelInteraction in the WPF Sample) there you will be able to call the Excel function Application.InputBox("Prompt", "Title", , , , , , 8)  (the type 8 return a range).

-  You will need to lookup on internet how to use this method.

Then you will return a message to the WPF form with the range you obtained from the inputbox.

PS: Don't send any message to Excel from a background worker or using a Tasks as the GC will not be able to close your application at the end and you will end up with memory leaks as Excel must be called on the main thread.

Hope that it will help you,

Amael

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Regards,

Amaël NOEL

[Govert van Drimmelen]

This project examines different ways to make a WinForms or WPF form that still allows mouse selection on the Excel sheet:

https://github.com/Ron-Ldn/DotNetRefEdit

It uses a combination of COM event hooks and window message hooks to get this right.

-Govert

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Regards,

Amaël NOEL

[Yselfh (Gianfranco)]

Hi Amael,

thanks for you answers, today I've discovered that with VisualStudio I didn't have any problem, I've that problem only with resource file created by SharpDevelop... Really strange.

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[Amael N]

Hi Yselfh,

Thank you for providing us with the solution to your problem.

I never used the IDE SharDevelop before. 

Thanks to the VS Community or VS Code, my life is easier. ;)

Have a good day,

Amael

Regards,

Amaël NOEL