Like the OLE Container control in Visual Basic 6, the Visual Studio 2005 ActiveDocumentHost control lets you host active documents (OLE documents) in your Windows applications.
For those who have tried to duplicate the behavior of the Visual Basic 6 OLE Container in Visual Studio 2002/2003, this is welcome relief. In Visual Studio 2005 it's just a matter of dragging the ActiveDocumentHost control to a form, completing an 'Insert Object' dialog, and using the properties and methods of this control customize behavior and appearance.
You can use the ActiveDocumentHost class' ActiveDocument property to access the object model of the hosted document to manipulate the hosted document through Automation.
Here is a partial list of the types of OLE objects the ActiveDocumentHost control can host:
Microsoft's Graph Chart, Excel Worksheet, Excel Chart, Word Document, Word Picture, Visio Drawing, PowerPoint Presentation, PowerPoint Slide, and WordPad Document.
Various image, sound, media, video, and graphic objects.
To learn more click -> ActiveDocumentHost Control Overview (Windows Forms)