Chapter 9: Developing Smart Tags and Smart Documents

Overview

Smart tags, which were introduced in Microsoft Office XP, allow developers to build solutions that can recognize data and provide additional functionality for that data. Smart tags recognize common terms, and based on that recognition, a program can perform actions associated with those terms. The best examples of smart tags are in Office. For example, when you type a stock symbol or a person's name in a Microsoft Word document, you might want to look up recent news about the stock or send the person an e-mail message. Before smart tags, you had to fire up your Web browser, go to a financial site, and look up the news about the company. Or to send e-mail, you had to start your e-mail client, type the person's e-mail address, and then send your message. The purple dotted lines under the text in Figure 9-1 show how recognized smart tags are indicated in Office.

Figure 9-1: Recognized smart tag terms in Word 2003

The types of actions that can be performed on a smart tag are up to the developer and depend on the type of data. If the tag is a recognized Outlook contact, for example, you can send e-mail, schedule a meeting, or perform other standard Outlook functions. The smart tag icon that Office adds above the recognized term reveals a menu that shows the actions that you can perform. Figure 9-2 shows the action menu for a smart tag in Word.

Figure 9-2: The action menu for a smart tag

Smart tags allow you to build dynamic applications that can recognize data and display a set of defined actions for that data. You can perform database lookups, create e-mail messages, or perform other functions based on the data and the action selected by the user .

In Office XP, only Word and Microsoft Excel support smart tags. In Office 2003, smart tag support has been expanded to include Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Access. Outlook supports smart tags if you use Word as your e-mail editor. Smart tag support was removed from Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows XP because of customer feedback. Office installs a smart tag helper for Internet Explorer, which a program can leverage, but Internet Explorer does not support smart tags natively.