How To - Develop a Simple Outlook 2013 Add-in in C#

This post explains creating a simple outlook add-in using Visual Studio 2013 and some details on accessing various mail properties in the add-in.

Required Tools

• Visual Studio 2013 ( you could also work with Visual Studio 2012)
• VS tools for Office - Download and install from here : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/archive/2014/03/03/office-developer-tools-for-visual-studio-2013-march-2014-update.aspx
• The executable starts the Web Installer which looks like the following:

Creating a Project

Create a new Outlook 2013 Add-in by selecting New Project -> Office / Sharepoint -> Outlook 2013 Add-in as shown below:

This will create a partial class called ThisAddIn.cs with two methods

• ThisAddIn_StartUp
• ThisAddIn_Shutdown

As is obvious - any initialization operations can be done in the StartUp function and any cleanup in the Shutdown function.

References

1. Ribbon Designer - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386089.aspx
2.