Some limitations in Outlook add-ins with VSTO

I had to code something, so a couple of nights ago I installed "the real" VS2005 and the VSTO toolkit and had a go at it. I've been trying out some Office-coding earlier but it has never been easier than what it is now with the integration with VS.

The first thing I noticed was the limitations you have for Outlook add-ins, especially if you want to add add or modify the left hand "navigation pane", you know the one with the big buttons on it saying Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes and so on. As far as I understand it, you can't do it with the VSTO tools alone. Also, it seems pretty impossible to stick your own Windows Form into the big "information pane" where you list and read mails and such, you know where you do all the work. What you *can* do though is bring up a web page and put some HTML in there. Very limited...

I guess we'll have to wait until someone comes up with a neat trick or wait for Office Outlook 12.

There are loads of good code samples on the MSDN webby, and I'm currently playing with the My.Blogs DLL and the Outlook add-in for it. Very useful DLL and neat code to look at. Note that the Outlook sample does not include the DLL itself, you need to download that first and copy the DLL into the Outlook add-in solution. Also, if you're surfing through a web proxy, you will have to add this piece of proxy code to all Feed-classes where it says

client.UseDefaultCredentials = True

Just add this somewhere next to that statement:

Dim host As String = "your.proxy.host"

Dim port As Integer = 8080 'your proxy port

Dim proxy As WebProxy = New WebProxy(host, port)

proxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = True

Good luck!