Excel Spreadsheet VSTO Controls

Question

I am hoping that someone can tell me what is the proper approach to add various controls (specifically ComboBoxes and Radio Buttons) to an VSTO excel program without using Winform controls.

A little background: I want to do create a solution that will have the benefits of being published as a clickonce application so that the excel spreadsheet can be easily updated for all users. Many of the fields are being added to the Sheets on startup. I am trying to keep it as only an Excel File with no Windows Form application.

I tried the .NET winform buttons, but without a FORM they lag when scrolling around the excel document. I have tried using filling in the combobox options from a hidden sheet, but I could not get the VBA macros to run from within VSTO after the options were added at run time. I tried adding the ActiveX and Microsoft Forms controls directly to Toolbox and then placing them, but I keep getting a NullReferenceException when I try to place them.

Does anyone have an elegant way to approach this.

Answer 1

Add the controls to the Ribbon. You can still programmatically control the state of the controls and populate the relevant lists.