>...it's a cool concept, and definitely revolutionary for VB. I'm wondering whether it will be available for office automation as well. That would be pretty cool.

The product Visual Studio Tools for Office allows you to program in VB.NET or C# for automating Office, so when a new version of VS is released with this new data-centric programming in .NET, you will be able to use VS Tools for Office for using the new versions of VB.NET or C# for Office programming/automation.