InfoPath 2010 COM Add-ins not available in Form Design

In a previous life, I wrote Outlook and Word Add-ins to automate/extend those office apps.

I was looking up whether there’s a way to script or create a COM Add-In to InfoPath during Form Design, so we can do 1-click refresh/update all secondary data connection offline data, without manually clicking wizards. Or even hook into some sort of OnPublishing event so it does the update automatically when you are about to Publish the form.

INTERESTING…

You can write COM Add-in for InfoPath 2010! Apparently new in 2010.

BAD!

Can’t extend the InfoPath form designer. Can only extend the editing. But that means you have more deployment issues.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa946869.aspx

How to: Create a COM Add-in to Add Custom Features to InfoPath

Office 2010

Microsoft InfoPath 2010 supports COM Add-ins for extending the form editing user experience. Although support for COM Add-ins was first added in InfoPath 2010, other Office applications such as Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel have supported COM add-ins since Office 2000.

COM Add-in support in InfoPath is available for the form editing environment. The form design environment cannot be extended by using COM Add-ins.

Did MS ran out of time?