VSTO vs old fashioned COM add-in for excel

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VS2015

Hello!
This is in a way a follow up to this post:
Best way to use a C# library in excel[^]

This response was appreciated and now I have perhaps a natural follow up question... what are peoples opinions about creating an Excel workbook via VSTO? i.e. an excel workbook visual studio solution with C# baked in? In a way that seems quite slick but I hear that it is slow and in a way it's less accessable because it requires a fancy version of VS. Any opinions are appreciated.
Cheers

Posted 27-Apr-15 8:13am

Picaro2015

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virusstorm 27-Apr-15 15:36pm

It really comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. I have used Excel VSTO to build data maintenance screens for users and generate Excel documents based on a set of inputs (used for planning and purchasing). The performance was more then adequate for my needs. It does not require a fancy version of Visual Studio, but you do need to down load the Visual Studio Office Tools for your version of Visual Studio. If you can elaborate specifically what goal you are trying to accomplish, I'd be happy to give you more feedback.

Picaro2015 27-Apr-15 17:24pm

Hello, thanks for your reply. The use case is that this is a professional environment where currently a solution is excel based with logic in VBA. It is becoming bloated and made up of several spreadsheets. For many reasons I will be creating a library in C# that contains business logic. One of the Excel interfaces still should exist (although be refactored). My goal is that the Excel interface will reuse the new C# code containing the business logic. As far as I can see the best ways to go are either VSTO or to make a COM DLL. Both as far as I could see would work, so my goal really is to go for the most future proof and "standard" solution. Hope this clarifies!

Maciej Los 27-Apr-15 16:20pm

It depends on many factors. The opinions that .net COM dll for Excel is slow has been fabricated...

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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter · Answer 1 · 2015-04-27T10:45:00

At work we have a full letter-printing system that uses Word via VSTO to enable users design letters that filled from our database with personal info (like birthday greetings and invitations). We also have a database to excel mini-system, that enables users to export dynamic data to Excel workbooks - also based on VSTO...
These solutions are handle hundred of thousands of end users - most of them via internet - without any problem, so you can drop the 'VSTO is slow' part...
As for 'fancy VS'? Do you mean that you have to do nothing because VS comes built in with Office project templates, so your work is much easier than with any previous development environment that uses COM interfaces?
So go for it...You will enjoy...