This is the June 2006 Community Technology Preview of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office "v3".

Note: This CTP requires you to have the beta 2 release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

The primary goal of this CTP is to give developers using the beta 2 release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system an early glimpse at some of the key new features and feature directions in the area of Microsoft Office programmability. The 2007 Microsoft Office release introduces a number of new technologies intended to further establish the Microsoft Office system as a powerful and flexible solution development platform.

The next version of Visual Studio Tools for Office is designed to help developers take better advantage of those new capabilities in the 2007 Microsoft Office release, as well as to provide additional infrastructure to ensure that Microsoft .NET Framework-based solutions in Office run more reliably, efficiently and securely.

The highlights of this CTP include:

• Support for the new Office Open XML file formats
• Support for the new UI ( “ribbon”) extensibility model
• Add-in projects for Microsoft Office Access 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Project 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Microsoft Office Visio 2007, and Microsoft Office Word 2007
• Support for the new application-level customizable task pane