Programming Applications for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

If you're writing add-ins for Outlook, then this book is essential. The small cost of the book will save you days of trying to work out the best most appropriate ways to do things with the new object model. Programming Outlook 2007? Writing an add-in? Want to speed up the development time? This is the book for you...

I found this book quite helpful since I am familiar with C# yet new to Programming with Outlook. My current assignment is to use VS 2008/C# to integrate with Outlook 2003 and 2007, I could apply some of the examples to my needs. Since I need to use VS 2008, then some of the steps are different and stick with events that would work for both Outlook versions, however, I have managed to figure them out.

This book provides a good basic understanding of the process for programming Office Outlook 2007 plug-ins. It has a good spread of information about all the underlying office/outlook types and objects, although only briefly touches on their use. Demo's of using these objects are provided, covering typical basic tasks, but more advanced functionality is not really shown, though alluded to. The book makes extensive use (for C# programming) of a Shim Wizard which provides the interlinking functionality between the managed code and the COM interfaces. Unfortunately this wizard has been extensively modified since the book was published, and some of the instructions provided are out of date, resulting in the plug-in not functioning correctly. As very little information is provided with the book (and with the Wizard) working through these issues takes some time. The book's website does not include any errata to indicate the correct use of the modified wizard, though the site does contain links to the latest version of the wizard. Other than that the book is well worth it.

Anyone who develops on Outlook should buy this book -- even if you don't have Outlook 2007. The beginning chapters review best practices and underlying architecture that every Outlook developer should understand, regardless of which version of Outlook you're using. Plus, you'll see all the great new stuff in 2007 which you'll want, so you can convince your stakeholders to upgrade. Later chapters drill into the technical details with surprising depth so you can find out what you need with only minimal trips to MSDN. Code samples are generous, albeit limited to only managed code... but that's understandable given the obvious advantages to using it for rapid application development. The difference between this book and previous attempts to document the Outlook development experience is like night and day. Kudos to Randy and Ryan for understanding what we face and doing an admirable job at enlightening us.