I have an existing .Net application that does some Word Interop work. On one machine where I have Word 2010 installed, I am able to reference the Word PIA (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word) with no problem, compile, run - everything is great. Now, I'm trying to test against Word 2013 to ensure that my application is compatible with it. So on another machine with only Office 2013 installed (no other instances of Office), I try to build the same exact source code, but get compilation errors because VS2010 can't find the Word PIA. I tried updating the reference of the PIA, but it does not show up in the list of available assemblies.
I checked my installation of Office - every component available is installed, including .Net Programmability Support for Word. I looked at the GAC in Windows Explorer, and the assembly appears to be there. I tried restarting multiple times.
My application targets the .Net Framework 3.5 (but I also tried changing that to 4.0). I'm working in VS2010 Professional, and I have Office Professional Plus 2013 installed on the box. What could I be missing??
Thanks.
Related
We have a Microsoft word add-in that is working fine on the majority of pc's.
On a particular windows 7 pc, it has the visual studio 2010 tools for office installed correctly.
But when a user creates a new template word document, they get teh following error:
The customization assembly could not be found or could not be loaded.
You can still edit and save the document. Contact your administrator
or the author of this document for further assistance.
We have tried unloading all dependencies but still does not make any difference.
This is an issue effecting a small amount of windows 7 pc's with office 2016 installed. It seems to be pc related rather than the application.
Usually, the reason behind such an error is that the permissions for loading the VSTO solution are missing. One thing that often gets "missed" when deploying VSTO solutions is that the document must be in a "trusted location". You might want to check that this is the case by looking in the Word "Trust Center" (in the Options). You also need to be sure you've installed the correct version of the VSTO run-time for the version of Windows and Office. Read more about that in the Troubleshooting Run Time Errors in Office Solutions article.
Also it may indicate that you didn't include all required dependencies to your add-in's installer (any platform-specific assemblies). Something is missing on the target machines, so I'd suggest looking for any difference between machines. You can add the .NET Framework, the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime, and the Office primary interop assemblies to your Setup package as prerequisites that are deployed with your Office solution. For information about how to install the primary interop assemblies, see Configuring a Computer to Develop Office Solutions and How to: Install Office Primary Interop Assemblies.
The required steps for deploying Office solutions are described in the following articles:
Deploying an Office Solution by Using ClickOnce
Deploying an Office Solution by Using Windows Installer
You can use the event viewer in Windows to see error messages that are captured by the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime when you install or uninstall Office solutions. You can use these messages from the event logger to resolve installation and deployment problems. For more information, see Event Logging for Office Solutions.
See Troubleshooting Office Solution Deployment for more information.
I have downloaded and installed the Entity Designer Starter Kit on both VS 2010 and 2012. I've created a project and have customized that project to allow me to add (for now) three attributes for each field value: See Below: (I'd post the image but I've only started posting here and I don't have 10 points) :(
As you can't see above, the Extension is working...on VS 2010, however, we need to use VS 2012 - so we can have the new support for geography fields in our Model, but it doesn't seem to work in VS 2012. The extension shows up as an installed extension in the Extension Manager in both versions, but doesn't work (or do anything in 2012.) when we build a new Model or open an existing one. :(
I've looked at the manifest for versioning info, and it DOES show up in the Extension Manager as having been installed (in both versions). (See part of Manifest below -- We are using the Professional version of 2012)
<SupportedProducts>
<VisualStudio Version="11.0">
<Edition>VSTS</Edition>
<Edition>VSTD</Edition>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
<Edition>Express_All</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
<VisualStudio Version="10.0">
<Edition>VSTS</Edition>
<Edition>VSTD</Edition>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
<Edition>Express_All</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
</SupportedProducts>
Does anyone have any idea why its not running in 2012?
Thanks for any help!!!!!!!
bob
Back in 2010 I found that the Starter Kit did not work, perhaps due to the version being for VS2010 RC.
So I rebuilt it, and today, I've just upgraded it to VS2012.
So you can get it from my Blog.
All I did was run it though the VS upgrade wizard, and then change the manifest to VS2012 and it worked fine. Perhaps you could explain a little more "geography fields", as I've not read up yet on any of the changes in VS2012.
http://www.jsrsoft.co.uk/blog/post/Entity-Framework-Starter-Kit-alternative
I have created an office addin for Word 2010 targeting .net 4 and this should apparently work in office 2007.
I have created the installer per this article with the exception that I include a dll in the dependencies rather than in the bootstrapper for the prerequisites.
The installer installs the vsto and the registry keys in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\ProjectName
The pc also has .Net 4 and the Office 2007 Primary interop assemblies.
The addin doesn't appear in Word 2007, any ideas where I could be going wrong?
UPDATE:
You have to sign your addin, this was pretty obvious! Office now recognises the addin but its gets a runtime error that I can't debug. Tried to debug with these steps with no luck!
Had to build for correct CPU version of office, in my case 32bit, Any CPU didn't work!
Hello I have been fighting some complexities with understanding deployment of Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA) for MS Office. I have Visual Studio Com Add-IN built in VS 2008 on pure com technology (not VSTO see bottom of this for more on that), which references 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies but the add-in may be used on 2003, 2007 or now 2010 Office machines. Because I never know if the customer will be using 2003, 2007, or 2010, I cannot simply deploy one PIA version as a prerequisite (unless I make 3 installers which I do not want to do). Now, my understanding is that when you follow the steps here to add 2003 and 2007 PIA to the prerequisite lists that show up in a Visual Studio (2008) setup package, the prerequisites are smart enough to determine which office version is running on the client you are targeting. So if you were to select 2003 primary interop assemblies and 2007 primary iterop assemblies as both being prerequisites then when this installs on a machine that has 2003 it should be intelligent enough to only try to add the 2003 PIA if those are missing on this machine and if this is a 2007 Office machine then it will only install 2007 PIA (and not try to install 2003 PIA).
Question 1 is this a correct understanding (that the prerequisite packages are this intelligent to only install what it needs based on the version of Office?)
Question 2 is there a way to get the 2010 PIA to show in the list of prerequisites in VS 2008 like 2003 and 2007 do? I do not want to upgrade this project to VS 2010 b/c it is considered a legacy app now with many customers from all around the world using it.
Question 3 Even though the actual assembly references 2003 primary interops, I do not presently deploy those interops with the add-in to the install location. Instead, I am assuming that if I can get the correct PIA installed then I don't need this present in the installation path, since the PIA would be in the GAC. However, one possible approach may be to just include the 2003 assemblies that are referenced (in my case excel and word) in the install path and not worry about the PIA. I suspect this would work on 2003 machines but perhaps not on 2007 and 2010 machines b/c on the latter, even if the 2003 interops that are referenced are found at run time in the install path of the assembly, I think if there is not a Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel/Word(etc) in the GAC, then 2007 and 2010 will likely not know what to do with the 11.0 (2003) interops (as I think the Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop files redirect requests for the 2003 interops to 2007 or 2010). Any thoughts on this?
Question 4: There is a well known bug with Framework 2.0 apps Office Add-Ins and Office 2003 where the add-in won't load. This was addressed by KB907417 aka KB908002. Dopes anyone know if this KB necessary if you develop on the 3.0 or 3.5 framework (and make 3.0 or 3.5 a prerequisite) since this problem was specific to framework 2.0? Or does the KB still need to be deployed b/c it's office 2003 that is the problem and not the version of the framework?
As you can tell by my 3 questions what I am trying to ascertain is whether we can build one single installer via the VS setup utility. If the PIAs can be done with one installer but the KB above is the obstacle (as perhaps the answer will come back that even on the 3.0 or 3.5 framework 2003 customers will need the KB) then maybe the path to one installer is to just make the KB a prerequisite across the board and install it on 2007 or 2010 machines, though they technically do not need them. Any thoughts on that option would be appreciated as well. Finally, I am aware that writing a manged Com Add-IN for excel or word is now generally done with VSTO instead of pure managed framework code, but this is not an option presently to change the legacy app to this direction. Also it is reported that the 4.0 framework now can be used to deploy add-ins without making any PIA a prerequisite but again, this is not a viable option right now.
Does the code use any Office 2007+ methods or classes? If not, are you sure you cannot use the 2003 PIAs in all cases? The later apps should be backward-compatible (supporting the same API) so the only reason you'd need an updated PIA is if you needed to access some feature added by 2007 or later, I think.
You may want to take a look at Add-in Express, which promises a one-for-all-versions installer, and is pretty easy to use.
As you can tell by my 3 questions what I am trying to ascertain is whether we can build one single installer via the VS setup utility
You cannot. You must create custom installer packager (setup bootstrapper).
Many years ago I used dotNetInstaller with HTML GUI builder, today WiX toolset would be better solution, I think.
Check how PIA .msi installers are constructed with Orca or .msi and .exe installers flow checking windows installer logs.
Based on registry checks, file checks, installed product checks, windows versions, office versions you can create conditions whether component should be installed or not.
Oh and I advise making plugin installers without prerequisites and installing them conditionally with your custom installer bootstrapper.
I have developed an application level add-in for Outlook targeting Outlook 2010 and .NET 4 and I want to run it on Outlook 2007, which should not be a problem due to the new "no pia" feature of .NET 4 (see this blog post).
However, after deploying the add-in with my Windows Installer package (the same package works for Outlook 2010), the add-in does not get loaded correctly and its load behavior is set to 2.
The test machine has the following software installed (in the given order):
Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (x86)
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise
Windows Installer 3.1
Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (x86)
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 (Extended)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime (x86)
The utility assemblies are included in my deployment location and the add-in is registered correctly (shows up in Outlook trust center and deployment manifest is also included). I do not reference any third party libraries.
The strange thing is that the CLR 4 is not even loaded into Outlook, which I can see through the Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger. When I create an test add-in on my development machine and throw an exception on add-in startup, the load behavior also gets set to 2 on startup (without debugging), but at least the CLR 4 gets loaded into the Outlook process. Has anyone ideas what (probably missing dependency) could cause the VSTO 2010 Runtime to not load .NET Framework 4? I have also tried reinstalling VSTO which caused no effect.
Best Regards,
Oliver Hanappi
I found the solution on the msdn forums. There is a problem when no clr 2 is installed. A hotfix is required in this case. For more details see http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/vsto/thread/d95cc828-fdb9-4622-bf09-291a25cea81b.