HOWTO: Get Microsoft Office bitmaps for Visual Studio add-ins

Author:	Carlos J. Quintero (Microsoft MVP)	Applies to:	Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002
Date:	August 2008		Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
Updated:	March 2013		Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

Introduction

When creating add-in commands calling Commands.AddNamedCommand, the 5th (boolean) parameter (MSOButton) and 6th (integer) parameter (Bitmap) of that method provide a way to specify the bitmap for the command and buttons created from it, which can be:

• When the MSOButton parameter value is false, the Bitmap parameter value specifies the Id of a custom (external) bitmap in a satellite or resource DLL as explained in the article HOWTO: Creating custom pictures for Visual Studio .NET add-ins commands, buttons and toolwindows.
• When the MSOButton parameter value is true, the Bitmap parameter value specifies the index of an internal bitmap of Microsoft Office.

More Information

• To get a visual list of the Microsoft Office bitmaps along with their indexes to use in the Bitmap parameter when the MSOButton parameter is true, Microsoft provided many years ago a handy Excel spreadsheet where you can enter a range of indexes and a command bar is created with the bitmaps in the specified range. When moving the mouse over a bitmap, a tooltip appears with its index. That Excel spreadsheet is no longer available on the Microsoft website but you can download it from here.
  
  Disclaimer: this Excel spreadsheet is provided with no warranties. Use it at your own risk.
  
  Hints:
  
  • Enter a small range of indexes because otherwise it can take long time to display the commmandbar.
  • In Microsoft Excel 2007, you have to switch to the Add-Ins tab in the ribbon to see the custom commandbar.
• To get a visual list of the Microsoft Office 2007 bitmaps that you can capture to use in a satellite DLL when the MSOButton parameter is false, see:
  
  2007 Office System Add-In: Icons Gallery
  
  Additionally, Visual Studio 2005 and higher provide a file with their own bitmaps resources in the following folders:
  
  • For Visual Studio 2005: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary
  • For Visual Studio 2008: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary
  • For Visual Studio 2010: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\VS2010ImageLibrary
  • For Visual Studio 2012: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35825

Go back to the 'Resources for Visual Studio .NET extensibility' section for more articles like this

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