VSTO/COM/XLL Add-Ins

VSTO Add-in Installation - Multiple Users

Mattheq — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:41:13 GMT

Greetings.

This is not a question, but relates to my (successful!?) experience creating and installing an Excel add-in using VSTO, VS2005 Professional, VSTO 2005 SE for Windows XP and Office 2003 for multiple users. While this may be old news to some people, I haven't come across 'plain English' explanations of how to achieve this anywhere else.

I had heard that VSTO COM add-ins could not be installed for multiple users on XP (I am not sure if this is valid for Vista, but am soon to find out!). The "not a valid Office Add-in" dialog is not a sight I plan to see again, as I finally stumbled on the solution to a successful installation (of sorts) for my COM add-in for all users in Windows XP. While far from elegant, it satisfies the requirements of the application distribution until I can learn more about it and discover the 'right' way to go about creating the installer.

Requirements for Installation of a VSTO Add-in for multiple users on Windows XP:

In the installer project, ensure that there are no unneccessary Registry Keys. The Keys I used to install are:
- HK_CURRENT_USER
  - Software
    - Classes
      - CLSID (This key is setup by the installer)
        
        <CLSID Value>
        
        InprocServer32 (Values set by VS2005)
        
        ProgID (Values set by VS2005)
        
        Programmable (Values set by VS2005)
        
        VersionIndependentProgID (Values set by VS2005)
      - MyProject
        
        CLSID
        
        (Default) = <CLSID Value>
    - Microsoft
      - Office
        
        Excel
        
        Addins
        
        MyProject
        
        CommandLineSafe = 1
        
        Decsription = "MyProject"
        
        FriendlyName = "MyProject"
        
        LoadBehavior = 3
        
        Manifest = "[TARGETDIR]MyProject.dll.manifest"
If you have any other registry keys in your installer project, delete them. I found that the existence of any other keys caused my add-in to display the "not a valid Office add-in" dialog.
User has to be logged in as an administrator on the local machine.
If the add-in is already installed, uninstall it. You may be offered the choice of repairing the installation. Repairing did not work for me.
- Due to the uninstall not cleaning itself up properly, it does not delete existing registry keys for other users on the same machine.
- Re-installing does not affect functionality for other users on the same machine.

Administration of the Add-in:

I have had to involve the Network Administrator in deployment on sites where Active Directory is being used (managed networks)
The Network Administrator has to:
- give temporary administrative privileges to the logged in user to install the add-in
- log the User out after installation and revert security privileges to prior settings

Pros:

COM Add-in works for all users on the same machine (provided they have run the installer).

Cons:

Installation for each user is cumbersome for network administration.
Updates mean that the add-in has to be reinstalled for every user of the add-in.
"Run As" installations do not work - user has to be logged on with administrative privileges as the required registry keys do not get created for the Current User.

VSTO add-in installation - multiple dll

mathias.brandewinder — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:50:24 GMT

In the spirit of sharing things I wish someone had told me when I started with VSTO, I posted here an entry which describes what to do if you want to use satellite assemblies (i.e. reference pre-built dlls) in your VSTO Excel 2003 add-in project.

If you just follow the msdn Walkthrough on Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Solutions Using Windows Installer (super helpful page), and simply add your dll to your add-in project, you will experience the following issue: your add-in will work perfectly on your development machine, the installer will run without a complaint, but your dll will be disabled, and you will get no error message or warning as to what is going on.

I struggled to figure out what the issue was, and after some (lengthy) trial and error, found out the origin of the problem: you need to grant security trust to every dll referenced by your add-in. Once you know that, it's pretty easy to do, but if you don't you may waste quite some time resolving the problem!

Cheers, and happy coding,

Mathias

Does a VSTO add-in require the .NET 3.5 framework?

mathias.brandewinder — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:37:50 GMT

Hello all,

I have written a VSTO add-in for Excel 2003/2007, which works great on a machine where the .NET framework 3.5 is deployed.

Unfortunately, one of the users works in an IT-restrictive company, which has "not tested" the 3.5 framework, and is reluctant to install it.

I tried to rebuild the add-in targeting the 2.0 framework, removing all 3.5 dependencies. Yet when I deploy it, it complains that the 3.5 framework is required, even though I cannot find a dependency in my project.

Does anyone knows if 3.5 is required, maybe through the PIA assemblies, or some other component I would have overlooked? Has anyone succesfully deployed a VSTO add-in on a 2.0 machine?

Thanks in advance for any light on the topic,

Mathias

VSTO Add-In Deployment - CAS

Mattheq — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:36:23 GMT

Hello once again. It seems that every step of the development cycle of my project ends up as a post here ;)

I'm at the distribution part of the development of my code. I have debugged and tested on my development machine and I am satisfied that there are no bugs preventing me from releasing a 'beta' version for testing among colleagues. However, I can't deploy it!

The code will (is supposed to) be deployed as a COM add-in for Excel 2003 on WinXP. I have followed the walkthroughs at MSDN Part 1 and Part 2, however I kept coming up with the error "Cannot set the security policy --> Cannot create the security code group 'MyProject'. --> The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)"

I have tried to remedy this a number of ways:

Steve Hansen's VSTO deployment model
Modifying the model in MSDN Part 1 using looping as shown on MSDN Forums.

With Steve Hansen's model, I can install the COM add-in, but then I run into the "Not a valid Office add-in" error when I try to install the add-in from Excel 2003. During installation, the vstor.exe and Office 2003 PIA both install, and the install wizard tells me it has completed successfully.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to resolve this? I am developing in VS2005 Pro with VSTO 2005 SE.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Matthew

VSTO Forms - Bug or Code Error?

Mattheq — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:38:00 GMT

Hello.

Since Dennis helped with my original post I have been happily converting an existing VBA add-in to VSTO. This has given me plenty of practice - as well as getting use to the VSTO way of doing things.

I have come up against a problem that I can't seem to resolve, and Google hasn't helped. My problems is:

I have created a custom menu for Excel with the events controlled by the VSTO add-in. One of the menus is

Private Sub mnuItem1_Click(ByVal Ctrl As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarButton, _
ByRef CancelDefault As Boolean) Handles mnuItem1.Click
Dim frmMyForm1 As New MyForm1
frmMyForm1.Show()

End Sub

Another menu is:

Private Sub mnuItem2_Click(ByVal Ctrl As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarButton, _
ByRef CancelDefault As Boolean) Handles mnuItem2.Click
Dim frmMyForm2 As New MyForm2
frmMyForm2.Show()

End Sub

When the event for mnuItem1 is triggered by the menu, two forms show - MyForm1 and MyForm2!!

I have searched through my code, variables and triggers, and I have stepped through the code, but there is no event that should show MyForm2 when the mnuItem1 button is clicked.

Is there somewhere else in the code I should be looking to resolve this? It just doesn't make sense to me.

VSTO Add-In With Menu

Mattheq — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:32:14 GMT

Morning to all.

I have been developing Excel code for some time, and while no expert, I can connect Excel with SQL and enforce security with Active Directory. Now I am looking to move to VSTO, but no matter what I read, or how much time I spend developing code, I just can't seem to get my head around it. Perhaps I shall go the way of the dinosaur ...

So, getting down to the nuts and bolts, as it were. I am trying to migrate a VBA add-in to VSTO. The VBA add-in has a menu that is displayed on the main menu bar of Excel. Can VSTO do this? If so, can anyone please provide an 'absolute beginners' link so I can get my head around the methods used to do this in VSTO?

Regards,

Matthew

Recommended Add-in: ASAP Utilities

Rick Williams — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:42:04 GMT

I use ASAP Utilities and find it very useful for some one off operations and shortcuts (i.e. not for VBA automating), such as deleting duplicates in a range, converting numbers stored as text into numbers, transposing or moving a range while maintaining the relative location of formulas, randomly numbering cells without duplicates, filling empty cells, and deleting empty rows/columns.

There are a whole bunch more that I don't really use, but most look like they would be pretty useful to someone: linear interpolation of data, insert sheet names or filenames into cells, invert selection... I think there are about 100 of them, though I've never bother to count. There is a handy search feature, and useful descriptions for each command, in addition to a PDF user guide.

I notice that it has now been updated for Excel 2007 too, though I am still running 2003 for a few more months. Have a look at the website for more details.

Comment here if you try it, or use other handy add-ins.

Managed add-in doesn't deploy

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:14:43 GMT

I've created a managed addin for Excel. It uses the COM Shim Wizard to create a COM automation addin which can be registered with Excel, and that proxies to the managed code. This code all works great on development systems that have VS2005 installed but it doesn't work on testing systems that do not have the development tools.

I've follow the advice and directions found in dozens of websites and forums. I've written a complete tutorial in my blog to describe how to get all of the code to work. I've documented the experience of hunting for solutions, trying and failing with bad advice, and finding corrections to popular code that's now years old. The information I have provided is a goldmine for anyone else going down this path - considering all of the other calls for assistance I've seen out there on this very topic. When the final solution is found to the deployment issue we'll all have a definitive end-to-end solution documented in one place. I've traced the issue down to missing registry keys in the deployment systems (documented in the blog). I believe these keys are supposed to be created by the COM Shim Wizard or by the VS Setup project - but I'm not sure this is all that's missing. I believe I'm missing something because I don't see anyone else doing this sort of work talking about manually defining a bunch of registry keys.

I'm hoping someone else can read the material, follow the tutorial, try to deploy, and help to find out what needs to be done. Or maybe someone can point to another solution that's down a completely different path. I know the COM Shim Wizard is unsupported, but if it's not doing what it should then what good is it, and wouldn't the maintainers want to know that something is wrong? If there is some other bug somewhere, let's find it. I'll do all of the legwork and testing theories but I need some knowledgable collaboration. It's very time consuming to tweak here, deploy there, and then try to diagnose issues. I've spent close to 200 hours on this. I think I've done my due dilligence and now I'm asking for help.

I've been asking about this in forums for so long that I feel like a whiny little newb but you'll see from my blog this isn't the case.

Thanks for any comments or assistance - and thanks just for reading this.
Tony Gravagno, Nebula Research and Development
Technical Editor, C#Builder KickStart, SAMS Publishing
Technical Editor, C++/CLI In Action, Manning
Technical Editor, C#Unleashed Second Edition, SAMS, (current effort)
http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2007/12/excel-tools6.html

Welcome!

XL-Dennis — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:53:54 GMT

Most welcome to the Add-ins section and we hope that You will find it interesting

Here in this subforum You can discuss and ask/answer questions about:

COM Add-ins created with VSTO (and also about workbook level solutions + templates.)
COM Add-ins created with C#/VB
COM Add-ins created with classic VB/C++
Automation Add-ins created with classic VB/C++
Automation Add-ins created with C#/VB
XLLs (Add-ins) created with C++ and C/C++

The subforum also covers deployment of all the above add-ins types.