Extensions and Updates

Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows 8.1
Microsoft Office Tools Nuget Package
Microsoft Web Developer Tools
Visual Studio Extensions for WIndows Library for Javascript
Workflow Manager Activities

Nuget Package Manager

Extensions (Productivity)

ReSharper (JetBrains)
CodeRush (DevExpress)
IndentGuider
OzCode
NCrunch
Upgrade Assistant - includes a convert to SDK project option ?
Code Converter (VB - C#)
SonarLint for Visual Studio 2022

NuGet

This is a free and open source package manager for the .NET Framework
This is included in Visual Studio and distributed as a Visual Studio extension
The NuGet gallery (nuget.org) is the central package repository used by all package authors and consumers
This is a package management extension for the Microsoft development platform

(Tools > Extensions and Updates)
SS

Once downloaded it will appear on the Extension and Update dialog box

NuGet Package Manager -
Using this package management tool will allow you to be easily notified of newer versions

Package Management
You can use NuGet to manage dependency packages referred to your projects
Select your project and choose (Tools > Library Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution)
This will display a list of all the packages which are being automatically managed

packages folder

You can remove the reference and then manually browse to a version in the packages subfolder

VSCode VBA Extension

link - marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=spences10.VBA

Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools

link - marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioPlatformTeam.ProductivityPowerPack2022

Macros

The Editor fully supports macro recording actions
(Tools > Macros > Macros IDE)
A macro is saved in a file (.vsmacros)

Once a macro has been created you can run it from the Macro Explorer

Recording

(Tools > Macro > Record Temporary Macro)

Macro Explorer

(Alt + F8) to display

VSTA

VSTA stands for Visual Studio Tools for Applications and is a set of tools that independent software vendors can use to build customisation capabilities into their applications.
VSTA will have an IDE similar to Visual Studio and will continue to be shipped with the Microsoft Office applications.

Office 2007 continue to come with VBA as the end-user customisation environment except for InfoPath 2007 which allows you to customise the forms by programming with Visual Studio for Applications.

What are the benefits of VSTA ?

1) An Excel application written in VSTA can be easily converted to a Visual Studio project and then distributed as an application.
2) Contains built-in versioning
3) VSTA can use the .NET Framework
4) There is still macro recording in Excel and Word ?
5) Code is not saved in the actual file but in separate assemblies
6) Code is isolated and located into separate application domains

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Applications

VSTA can exists side by side with VBA in the host application.
This will allow the host to slowly migrate to managed code.

The main component of the VSTA is the "AddInManager" which is a group of classes that are used to manag add-ins.
Insteadm the AddInManager consists of several discreet classes.
The most basic of these are the:
AddIn
AddInCollection
Context
All of these are packaged in an assembly named Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.AddInManager.dll
and are in the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications namespace.
There are many classes in the AddInManager, mostly used in more advanced scenarios.

So what are each of these classes ?

AddIn Class

This represents an assembly containing entry-points that compose a user-created add-in.
In most cases the assembly will be the output of the VSTA project that was built by the end-user in either VSTA ot Visual Studio IDE
This is probably the most important class in the AddIn Manager.

AddInCollection Class

This a collection of AddIns

Context

Used to define behaviours that are common to all the add-ins it contains, such as the HostItemProvider and the Evidence used if any AppDomains need to be created.