Coding

Just a quick one: Anyone out there that needs to embed Microsoft Office into their application somehow can do so using a sample OCX available from Microsoft called DSO Framer (KB311765) as a starting point. The sample does everything you need it to out of the box, but the biggest trick is to make sure you're closing each office instantiation cleanly.

It also allows you to play with disabling menus, toggling read-only, and redirecting other functions, and can be quite powerful. At the time of writing, it still works for the up-coming Office 2010, but I would recommend you avoid embedding office in future unless you're unable to argue the point with your managers. While it works with Office 2007, it's a bit flakey, so I suspect Microsoft will ditch it at some point, but you can always download it here (468KiB ZIP).

Importantly, it's free. Do not spend your money on Edraw Office Viewer as it's the same thing, only with renamed symbols and a hefty price tag! Go for the public domain version.