REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 2, 1998 — In today’s keynote speech at Microsoft® Developer Days ’98, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates announced Microsoft Office 2000 Developer, the edition of Office that provides the essential tools for professional developers building and deploying solutions with Microsoft Office 2000. Developers who integrate Microsoft Office and Office components into their custom solutions can take advantage of the extensive productivity tools and documentation that are included in Office 2000 Developer.
Over 2.6 million professional developers worldwide use Office as part of their custom solutions, taking advantage of the prebuilt functionality of the applications to quickly build and deliver solutions that end users are already familiar with. Office 2000 extends the reach of end users, enabling them to access and use corporate data and to publish and share documents on the Web. Developers will benefit from new programmability enhancements, including Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) 6.0, as well as support for the new unified COM add-in architecture, Office components and the ability to programmatically save documents as HTML pages to Web servers.
“Developers are interested in making full use of the power of Office in any solution they build,”
said Paul Gross, vice president of developer tools at Microsoft.
“With Office Developer, they’ll get the tools, samples and documentation to help them extend and take advantage of Office to build solutions that empower end users.”
Microsoft Office is the knowledge worker’s entry point to the
“digital nervous system,”
where data and information is gathered and analyzed to generate content that is then published (via print, e-mail or the Web) to the organization and customers.
Quickly Build Solutions That Work With Office
Office 2000 Developer contains many new features that greatly enhance developer productivity for building solutions that use Office and Office components in a custom application. Included in Office Developer are the other elements of the new high-end version of the Office product suite, such as the Microsoft FrontPage® 2000 Web site creation and development tool. Office Developer also includes the Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
™
version control system and integration of Visual SourceSafe with the Visual Basic for Applications editor. Office Developer also includes enhanced VBA productivity tools for quickly building solutions with Office and third-party VBA-enabled applications:
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VBA add-ins , including the VBA Error Handler, for automatic error handling, and the Office Developer Code Librarian, for maintaining an indexed, searchable file of prewritten code. The Office Developer Code Librarian will ship with over 1,000 lines of professionally written and indexed sample code for automating Microsoft Office applications.
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COM Add-In Designer , which enables developers to build solutions that work with the new, consistent add-in Model for Microsoft Office. With the COM Add-In Designer, VBA can now produce fully compiled DLLs that run in any Office application.
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Tools and information for developers using the Visual Studio
®
development system who are integrating with Microsoft Office 2000, including COM add-in templates for building COM add-ins with the Visual Basic development system, the Visual C++® development system and the Visual J++
™
development system for Java, as well as sample code for automating Office applications.
Enhanced Access to Enterprise Data
Office 2000 Developer includes data access tools that enable developers to easily integrate data directly into Microsoft Office applications:
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Data environment for easy, graphical access to enterprise data
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Data Binding Manager for binding data sources to Office documents, Microsoft Forms and ActiveX® Controls
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Data Report Designer for creating high-fidelity reports based on data obtained through the data environment
Easier Deployment and Management of Solutions Built With Office 2000
Office 2000 Developer includes integrated tools for packaging and deploying solutions and distributing Microsoft Access solutions royalty-free, and managing Jet database replication via the network or the Web:
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Package and Deployment Wizard , for packaging applications for installation and deployment via a local area network or the Internet. The Package and Deployment Wizard automatically identifies dependency files for redistribution of solutions built with Office and offers easy disk-, CD- or Web-based deployment options.
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Access Runtime , for royalty-free redistribution of solutions built with Microsoft Access 2000
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Jet Replication Manager , to view and manage replicated Microsoft Jet databases over a network or the Internet.
More Information
More information will be available on the Office Developer Forum, the Web site for developers working with Office. Office 2000 Developer is scheduled to be available in the first half of 1999. For more information on Office 2000 Developer, please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/officedev/default.asp . For more information about Office 2000, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/default.asp .
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
Microsoft, Visual Basic, FrontPage, Visual SourceSafe, Visual Studio, Visual C++, Visual J++ and ActiveX are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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