Extensions for Microsoft Office

Add-ins for MS Office

You can use add-ins to customize the broad functional range of Microsoft Office to the specific needs of your company or your team. Complex workflows can be simplified, repetitive tasks can be reduced to a few clicks, or missing functions can be added.

The producitvity gain resulting from an optimization of workflows and from the tailoring of the Office-Suite is important and can easily recover the initial investment. In most cases it is not a question of complex applications, but manageable customizations.

I have been developing Microsoft Office add-ins for my clients since 1996, using C#, VB.NET and VBA. I advise them on development, configuration and deployment of add-ins. I am specialized in the customization of Microsoft Word for clients with a high number of complex and structured documents (as law firms and banks). Due to long experience with VBA and VB6 (legacy Visual Basic), I can help in migration projects for older solutions.

Click here for reference projects and examples

Configuration

Using Microsoft Offic with an installation "out-of-the-box" is a standard procedure for a Home Office or a small company. The configuration for individual needs can then be performed by the user or the team.

In medium-size and larger businesses installation should be planned together with a configuration. I will support your company in migrations to new versions of Microsoft Office, in installation questions and in the configuration of the product to enhance user productivity.

• Using Windows group policies. Based on group policies certain features of MS Office can be deactivated or configured. However, Microsoft recommends a restricted use of group policies so as to minimize workload on Windows startup.

• Using add-ins to configure Microsoft Office. A detailed tailoring to the needs of a company requires the use of add-ins. For example, you cannot add or rename menu items through group policies.

Workflow Analysis

It is seldom the case that all requirements for the development or a template set are known when the consultant starts to work for the client. In most cases a workflow analysis should be conducted as a preliminary step to write the specification. This is very important if the template set or the macros have to deal with documents being edited in multiple steps. Often productivity gains are derived in coming from the workflow analysis, not from the development itself.