Articles Tagged “COM”
22 articles tagged “COM”, newest first.
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WinRT Is COM — IInspectable, .winmd, Language Projections, and Why WinUI Still Rests on a Binary Contract
WinRT is not a managed runtime but an ABI built on COM plus .winmd metadata and language projections. Covers IUnknown vs. IInspectable, HWND setup, and packa...
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What Is an OLE Object? — How Embedding and Linking Work and the Pitfalls in Business Documents
An OLE object is what embeds an Excel table in Word. Learn embedding vs. linking, compound files, In-Place Activation, broken links, bloat, and security.
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How the Clipboard and Drag & Drop Work — Handling OLE Data Transfer Correctly in Business Apps
Why Excel pastes break and paste fails once the source closes: clipboard formats, delayed rendering, OLE drag and drop, and clipboard history and cloud sync ...
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Windows Shell Integration Today — Context Menus, File Associations, and What Changed in Windows 11
Why Windows 11 hides context menus behind "Show more options": extension → ProgID → verb basics, classic shell-extension caveats, and the IExplorerCommand + ...
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Calling COM and .NET from PowerShell — Widening What Your Scripts Can Reach
A practical guide to calling .NET classes from PowerShell, embedding C# and Win32 APIs with Add-Type, driving COM, cleaning up leftover Excel processes, why ...
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DLL and COM Interface Backward Compatibility — A Decision Table for Which Changes Break Callers
Which changes to a DLL or COM component actually break their callers? We lay out the three layers of compatibility — binary, source, and behavioral — a decis...
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Do Business Apps Run on Windows on Arm? — The Reality of x64 Emulation (Prism) and Native DLLs/COM
An answer, aimed at developers and IT staff, to 'will our business app run on Windows on Arm?' Covers how x64 emulation (Prism) works, the layers it can't re...
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Why EXCEL.EXE Processes Remain After C# Excel COM Automation — Reference Release Patterns and the Replacement Decision
A practical look at why EXCEL.EXE processes remain running after automating Excel from C# via Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel, explained through COM reference...
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Choosing Windows Inter-Process Communication ── A Decision Table for Named Pipes / TCP / gRPC / Shared Memory / COM
How do you choose the right way for Windows applications to talk to each other? This article organizes named pipes, local TCP, gRPC, shared memory, file-base...
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Windows App Outsourcing and Custom Software Development: What to Sort Out Before You Ask
Before commissioning Windows app outsourcing or custom software development, here is how to sort out existing software modification, device integration, COM/...
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A Developer's Strange Love, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Windows
Windows is a hassle. But that hassle is the hassle of an OS that has carried real-world business on its back.
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Why ActiveX Stops Working in Office 2024/Microsoft 365 and How to Diagnose It
When ActiveX stops working in Office 2024/Microsoft 365, work through the causes in order: default disablement, 32-bit/64-bit mismatch, COM registration, dep...
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Registration and Bitness Pitfalls in COM/OCX/ActiveX Development
A practical look at the 32bit/64bit, Visual Studio 2022, regsvr32/Regasm, administrator-rights, HKCR, and STA/MTA pitfalls that trip up COM, OCX, and ActiveX...
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What Is Reg-Free COM - Using COM Without Registration
An overview of Reg-Free COM basics, the roles of activation contexts and manifests, the benefits, the limitations, and how to decide when to use it in practice.
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How to Build Excel Report Output - COM / Open XML / Templates
The design of Excel report output changes considerably depending on whether you automate Excel itself, generate xlsx files directly, or keep existing VBA. As...
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Using a .NET 8 DLL from VBA with Full Typing - COM Exposure and dscom TLB
Call .NET 8 code from VBA with early binding: expose a class library to COM, generate a TLB with dscom, and register the comhost DLL. Sample code on GitHub.
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What Are COM / ActiveX / OCX? - The Differences and Relationships Explained
A practical guide to what COM is, what ActiveX is, and what OCX is - covering their differences and relationships, the connection to OLE, where they are used...
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How to Handle ActiveX / OCX Today - A Keep / Wrap / Replace Decision Table
When you find ActiveX / OCX, how to choose between keeping, wrapping, and replacing it, covering 32-bit / 64-bit, registration, browser dependencies, and ven...
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An Introduction to Media Foundation - Understanding the API Through a COM Lens
We explain what Media Foundation is, together with the basic vocabulary of Windows media APIs - COM, HRESULT, IMFSourceReader, MFTs - in the order you should...
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COM STA/MTA Fundamentals - Threading Models and How to Avoid Hangs
COM STA/MTA fundamentals, covering the apartment model, UI threads, message loops, marshaling, and how to think about avoiding hangs.
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A Worked Example of a COM Bridge for Calling a 64-bit DLL from a 32-bit App
When a 32-bit app cannot call a 64-bit DLL directly, a COM bridge can connect them. We walk through the approach, including the Windows constraints, the arch...
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What Is COM? - Why the Design of Windows COM Is Still Beautiful Today
We explain what COM is from the perspective of Windows COM interface design, IUnknown, GUIDs, and binary compatibility, and why it still holds up today.