14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is currently serving an update version of the Excel 2010 XLL Software Development Kit through the Download Center. The previous release of the software development kit for the latest iteration of Excel was delivered at the start of December 2010, when the Office 2010 productivity suite was still in Beta. At that time, the Redmond company promised that an update to the SDK would follow after Office 2010 was finalized. As users already know, Microsoft released Office 2010 to manufacturing on April 15th, 2010.
“The Microsoft Office Excel 2010 XLL Software Development Kit (SDK) contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, and sample projects to guide you in developing Excel 2010 XLLs,” Microsoft revealed. Developers will need either Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008, and Excel 2010, of course.
Office 2010 RTM, Excel 2010 RTM included, is available for download through MSDN and TechNet for subscribers. End users will need to wait until the coming month to purchase Office 2010, while business users can already buy the productivity suite from Microsoft.
According to Microsoft, “the Excel 2010 XLL SDK includes the following:
“• C API includes header and source files that enable a DLL to access Excel 2010 functionality, and a description of the interface that a DLL should expose to work with the Excel Add-in Manager. • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 projects includes C/C++ source code and shows how to use the C API. • Documentation includes the API function reference, conceptual, and how-to Help topics.
“In conjunction with Microsoft Excel 2010, the Microsoft Excel 2010 XLL Software Development Kit (SDK) includes support for the following new features:
“• New Functions The Microsoft Excel 2010 XLL SDK supports calling back to all of Excel 2010's new worksheet functions. • Asynchronous User-defined Functions Excel 2010 now supports calling user-defined functions (UDF) asynchronously, which can improve performance by enabling several calculations to run at the same time. • Cluster Connectors Cluster connectors enable UDFs to run on high-performance compute clusters. • 64-bit Support You can now compile and link both 32-bit and 64-bit XLLs.”
Excel 2010 SDK: Excel 2010 XLL Software Development Kit is available for download here.