I just published a very short (not much time returning from vacation).

This time it is about a new method I found to send emails with attachments using Outlook (without any kind of security dialogs).

You can read it from http://www.emoreau.com/Entries/Articles/2010/07/Sending-e-mails-with-attachments-a-different-method.aspx

Covariance and ContraVariance can be hard to understand.

This short article gives you a very good basis: http://www.codeguru.com/columns/vb/article.php/c17635

I got a great news in my inbox this morning. Microsoft renews me as a MVP for another year. It will be my seventh year.

It is great to be recognize for the contributions we do for the community!

Extract from the e-mail:

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Visual Basic technical communities during the past year.

After Mac-vs-PC, here is the Java-vs-.Net. It is a must see.

For a 3rd year in a row, Microsoft will presents its TechDays Canada tour in 8 cities in Canada.

The tour will stop in Montréal November 23-24, 2010. You can register today and benefits from a great early bird special price.

You can visit the official web site at http://www.techdays.ca/

Damir Bersinic alsow wrote a FAQ on TechDays that you can read from http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2010/06/24/your-techdays-2010-frequently-asked-questions.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CanITPro+%28Canadian+IT+Professionals%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Apparently, some developpers are having issues when they are doing cut and copy operations in Visual Studio 2010. 

The official error message reads like this:

"Insufficient available memory to meet the expected demands of an operation at this time, possibly due to virtual address space fragmentation. Please try again later."

Scott Guthrie himself blogged about a public patch available for this issue which you can download and apply here if you are running into it.  More details on the issue can be found on the Visual Studio team blog here.

I have been quiet in the last few weeks. I wasn't hibernating. I was simply over-busy!

But I took some time to write an article on something I really had to do!

Two weeks ago, I was asked by a user to provide access to some data of one of their database so that they can use it directly from Excel. I first suggested some methods that are already implemented in the application (like extracting the data and use it in a lookup table). But nothing could satisfy him. He has one idea in mind: being able to use a formula to have access to the data (ie: GetData(value1, value2)) much like Bloomberg and many others vendors are providing.

It was time for me to dig into the creation of an add-in which I knew it was possible but I never built. So guess what is my article all about this month?

You can read the full article from http://www.emoreau.com/Entries/Articles/2010/06/Creating-Excel-Add-in-with-VBnet-or-C.aspx

I just published an article about an unknown class which is available since the version 2.0 of the .Net Framework.

Even if it is part of the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, C# developers should really consider using it!

You can read the article from http://www.emoreau.com/Entries/Articles/2010/05/Do-you-know-the-TextFieldParser.aspx

In a week from today, on May 19, PASS (the Professional Association for SQL Server - http://www.sqlpass.org/) offers its free 24 Hours of PASS event. It gives you access to 24 non-stop free session on SQL.

Get all the details from http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/

Don't miss it!

If you are using Windows 7, you probably now like the fact that you can open files (like Word and Excel) by right-clicking the application on the lauch bar and select the file you want to work with. Maybe even pin them!

Sadly, that doesn't work for Visual Studio 2008.

Josh Einstein shows how to fix it with a simple registry hack that you can find from http://einsteintech.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns%2189E05724AF67A39E%21744.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=708268399

Kate Gregory explains why Visual Studio 2008 has this behavior at http://www.gregcons.com/KateBlog/DoYouWishVisualStudio2008ShowedSolutionsInTheJumplist.aspx