Is there a way to use .Net Objects in Excel?
I’ve seen people using COM classes created using VB6 in Excel. So I’m wondering if we can use .Net objects? (without making them into COM objects)
1 Answer
2 Cases
You want to access a .NET Object you created from within Excel VBA
Requires the .NET Component to be registered for COM Interop.
You want to access a .NET Object you created from within an Excel .NET Application
Use Visual Studio Tools for Office System to create the Workbook and objects all in the same place. Very easy.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto
Some more useful links of how to build COM Interop assemblies
Another Stackoverflow question with comments on this topic
A very detailed read on the ins and outs of COM Interop with .NET
Effectively, once you learn the style, you can quickly create, edit and distribute .NET assemblies to be accessed directly by Office clients.
Hope this helps
4 Comments
Viv
I'm looking more for accessing .Net components in Excel VBA. Thank you for your response... maybe I need to go the COM route for now.
Pepto
Writing code in .NET and accessing via COM Interop and the VBA CreateObject method is actually fairly straight forward. Hoping that you can use that standard to achieve what you want. Found some useful links I added to the bottom of my answer that may be of further research interest to you
Viv
I've done COM classes using .Net... There are problems when you need to do changes to the classes and re-deploy it to the users. Also it would mean I need to create a shell for the classes as I do not want to make the existing classes to be COM visible.
Pepto
Have you looked at using VSTO? Is that even remotely a viable option? I only ask because I experience the exact same pain you describe above and we just migrated to VSTO. Really made our Office development a lot easier. Just my .01 cents