Upgrade from VS 2003 to VS2005 and doing things with MS Office documents

[Dycker]

Hello, I am thinking of upgrading to VS2005 specifically because I may need to do some things with MS Office documents from withing my Window Application. I have been reading a bit about the Tools for Office version of VS2005 and a couple of things are not apparant to me. This is what I need to be able to do (at least):

1. Present users of my Windows Application with a list of Word or Excel documents with the ability to print them from the application. (This is something I have tried with some success in VS2003 but not any consistancy over various users.)

2. From my Windows Application, I will need to be able to open a Word template and place in it data coming from fields in an SQL table. Similarily, I need to create Excell documents based on data in my SQL database.

From what I am reading, I would need to create an Office Project for each Word or Excell document!? Can I then access these Office Projects from my Windows Forms Project? I don't understand if I could create a Forms Project and print and alter Word or Excell documents from it.

I hope this is clear because it is a bit muddy to me. I had lots of trouble trying to print Word documents through Windows Forms in VS2003. I was hoping things are easier in VS2005.

Thanks,
Gerry

P.S.
Is there any problems with having VS2003 and VS2005 on the same computer?

 

[Paszt]

In both versions it is possible to do Office Automation using references to the Office libraries (all the tasks you wrote about above can be done through office automation). VS2005 is 2 years newer than VS2003 and one would expect it to be easier/better, and I have found this to be true.
I haven't used Office Projects but after reading about them I don't think that is the solution you would want to pursue for the reason you stated. It would however be possible to create an Office Project and interact with it from a WinForm App using automation.

Your comment about consistancy over various users may have to do with different versions of Office and that can be overcome using late binding.