README.md

page_type	urlFragment	products	languages	extensions	description
sample	word-add-in-hello-world	office-word office	javascript	contentType technologies createdDate samples Add-ins 10/11/2021 10:00:00 AM	Create a simple Word Add-in that displays hello world.

Create a Word Add-in that displays hello world

Summary

Learn how to build the simplest Office Add-in with only a manifest, HTML web page, and a logo. This sample will help you understand the fundamental parts of an Office Add-in.

Features

• Display hello world in Word.
• Learn fundamentals of the manifest.
• Learn how to initialize the Office JavaScript API library.
• Interact with document content through Office JavaScript APIs.

Applies to

• Word on Windows, Mac, and in a browser.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft 365

Understand an Office Add-in

An Office Add-in is a web application that can extend Office with additional functionality for the user. For example, an add-in can add ribbon buttons, a task pane, or a content pane with the functionality you want. Because an Office Add-in is a web application you must provide a web server to host the files.

The sample contained in this folder is a sample that is designed to run in Word.

Key components

The hello world sample implements the Manifest and Web app components identified in Components of an Office Add-in.

• Manifest: You only need one manifest file for your add-in. The hello world sample contains two manifest files to support two different hosting scenarios.
  • manifest.xml: This manifest file will load the add-in from the GitHub repo (through GitHub page hosting). You can run the sample and don't need to configure your own web server.
  • manifest.localhost.xml: This manifest file will load the add-in from a local web server that you configure. See below in this readme for instructions on configuring your own web server.
• Web app: The hello world sample implements a task pane named taskpane.html that contains HTML and JavaScript. The taskpane.html file contains all the code necessary to display a task pane, interact with the user, and write "Hello World" into the first Paragraph of the document.

Initialize the Office JavaScript API library

The sample initializes the Office JavaScript API library with a call to office.onReady() in the taskpane.html file. This is required before you can make any calls to the Office JavaScript APIs. For more information about initialization, see Initialize your Office Add-in.

Office.onReady((info) => {});

Write to the document

When the user chooses the button, the sayHello() function is called. This function Then calls Word.run to run code and call the Office JavaScript APIs. It uses a context object provided by the Office JS API library to get the document body and inserts a Paragraph with the text "Hello World". Calling context.sync() runs the command.

For more information see Tutorial: Create an Word task pane add-in

function sayHello() {
  return Word.run((context) => {
    // insert a paragraph at the start of the document.
    const paragraph = context.document.body.insertParagraph(
      'Hello World',
      Word.InsertLocation.start
    );

    // sync the context to run the previous API call, and return.
    return context.sync();
  });
}

Run the sample on Word on web

An Office Add-in requires you to configure a web server to provide all the resources, such as HTML, image, and JavaScript files. The hello world sample is configured so that the files are hosted directly from this GitHub repo. Use the following steps to sideload the manifest.xml file to see the sample run.

1. Download the manifest.xml file from the sample folder for Word.
2. Open Office on the web.
3. Choose Word, and then open a new document.
4. Open the Insert tab on the ribbon and choose Add-ins.
5. On the Office Add-ins dialog, select the MY ADD-INS tab, choose Manage My Add-ins, and then Upload My Add-in.
   
   
6. Browse to the add-in manifest file, and then select Upload.
   
   
7. Verify that the add-in loaded successfully. You will see a Hello world button on the Home tab on the ribbon.
8. Choose the Hello world button on the Ribbon to see the Add-in Taskpane with the text "This add-in will insert the text 'Hello world!'".
9. Choose the Say hello button to insert "Hello World" in the document.

Run the sample on Word on Windows or Mac

Office Add-ins are cross-platform so you can also run them on Windows, Mac, and iPad. The following links will take you to documentation for how to sideload on Windows, Mac, or iPad. Be sure you have a local copy of the manifest.xml file for the Hello world sample. Then follow the sideloading instructions for your platform.

• Sideload Office Add-ins for testing from a network share
• Sideload Office Add-ins on Mac for testing
• Sideload Office Add-ins on iPad for testing

Configure a localhost web server and run the sample from localhost

If you prefer to run the web server and host the add-in's web files from your computer, use the following steps:

1. Install a recent version of npm and Node.js on your computer. To verify if you've already installed these tools, run the commands node -v and npm -v in your terminal.

2. You need http-server to run the local web server. If you haven't installed this yet you can do this with the following command:

   npm install --global http-server

3. You need Office-Addin-dev-certs to generate self-signed certificates to run the local web server. If you haven't installed this yet you can do this with the following command:

   npm install --global office-addin-dev-certs

4. Clone or download this sample to a folder on your computer. Then go to that folder in a console or terminal window.

5. Run the following command to generate a self-signed certificate that you can use for the web server.

   npx office-addin-dev-certs install

   The previous command will display the folder location where it generated the certificate files.

6. Go to the folder location where the certificate files were generated. Copy the localhost.crt and localhost.key files to the hello world sample folder.

7. Run the following command:

   http-server -S -C localhost.crt -K localhost.key --cors . -p 3000

   The http-server will run and host the current folder's files on localhost:3000.

Now that your localhost web server is running, you can sideload the manifest-localhost.xml file provided in the word-hello-world folder. Using the manifest-localhost.xml file, follow the steps in Run the sample on Word on web to sideload and run the add-in.

Questions and feedback

• Did you experience any problems with the sample? Create an issue and we'll help you out.
• We'd love to get your feedback about this sample. Go to our Office samples survey to give feedback and suggest improvements.
• For general questions about developing Office Add-ins, go to Microsoft Q&A using the office-js-dev tag.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2021 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Note: The taskpane.html file contains an image URL that tracks diagnostic data for this sample add-in. Please remove the image tag if you reuse this sample in your own code project.