Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office. Is it worth using?

Question

It seems like deployment of VSTO code is very cumbersome.

My use case is I need to enforce a certain content structure in word. Am I better of doing it all in VBA?

Answer 1

It really depends on what makes most sense for your project. If it's only going to be for certain files and a couple users, I would recommend VBA.

If it's more complex and needs to work on all files for all users, I think a VSTO plugin would be the way to go. It really depends on your situation and complexity you're trying to enforce.

Answer 2

Before VSTO 3.0 I would agree with Ryan Lanciaux but not anymore. These days I have become so productive in VSTO that I do even small one off jobs in VSTO. That have saved my butt in a few cases as the add-in became very popular within the firm, and all I had to do was to add the path to the Click-once package :-)