Office COM automatisation - calling python from VBA

[Chris Smith]

>>>>> "guy" == guy lateur <guy.lateur at pandora.be> writes:

    guy> Hi all, I am trying to write some code (macro's, if you like)
    guy> to glue together our Office applications (mainly Word, Excel
    guy> and Outlook). We have a lot of different projects going on
    guy> simultaneously. The idea is to develop a centralized
    guy> framework (starting point, common interface) for my users to
    guy> view/control their documents/correspondence, on a per project
    guy> basis.

    guy> As an example, I'd like to have a control (button, menu
    guy> entry) in Outlook that allows my users to bring up, say, an
    guy> email for a certain contact (architect, owner, engineer, ..)
    guy> on a certain project, with certain attachments, .. Currently,
    guy> I have a 'public folder' in OL (Exchange) that reflects our
    guy> project structure.

    guy> I'll be using COM, and I could probably make an application
    guy> that controls Outlook (externally). But I'd also like to have
    guy> this functionality exposed in OL itself. So I guess I'll need
    guy> to use VBA, but I don't really like VBA - relax, please, it's
    guy> just an opinion.. ;)

    guy> So, ideally, I'd like to program as much as possible in
    guy> python (I'm pretty new to that, too, btw), and only use VBA
    guy> if needed - say, to call python objects/methods (+ wxGUI,
    guy> please).


    guy> Would that be an easy, a hard, or an insane strategy? Maybe
    guy> there are some tutorials on this (searched the list, but
    guy> didn't quite find any).  If anyone happens to have any
    guy> xp/tips on this, please, fire away!


    guy> Best regards, g

You can have VBA code invoke a python script asynchronously without
much trouble.
If you peruse MSDN, you can find some examples that will let you have
VBA block while waiting on a python script.
Serious interaction?  I'd probably persue VisualStudio and IronPython,
if ActiveState's PythonWin isn't going to be enough.
Maybe PythonWin can make Python a COM server; never researched it.
Hope these ideas help,
Chris