A Task Pane is a new feature included in Microsoft Office XP. It is a dockable dialog window that gives users a convenient way to use commands, gather information, and modify their documents. An Office Task Pane can contain one or more pages, and each page is broken up into sections. Developers can programmatically manipulate the Task Pane to perform certain functions such as view the pane, dock or undock the window, and add custom information to the New Item page that is common among all Office XP applications. *
* [Source: Microsoft Knowledge Base]
