Unable to install a VSTO excel 2003 AddIn

Question

I developped a VSTO SE Excel 2003 add in. When launching and debuging the add in from visual studio, it works well. But when I try to deploy it from my own install it never works.

To sum up, here is my install process:

• the files are copied at the right location

• I register the addin: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\ with the appropriate values (Default, CommandLineSage, Description, FriendlyName, LoadBehavior, Manifest).

• I also add entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ (with CLSID key including an UUID)

• And HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx} with InprocServer32 (with the manifest name and path, the addinloader.dll fullpath), ProgID (with the assembly name (without extension)), Programmable and VersionIndependententProgID (with the assembly name too).

• I set the fulltrust policy to the url of every assemblies using caspol -m -ag "xxx" -url "MyUrl\Assemblies.dll" FullTrust -name "name"

Do I miss something ?

Answer 1

In the deployment machine, check whether the following are available:

1. Currect version of VSTO Runtime

2. Office 2003 Primary Interop Assesmblies

regards,

yenkay...

Answer 2

A good way to debug VSTO installation/loading issues is to have VSTO show you all errors. To do that, create an environment variable called VSTO_SUPPRESSDISPLAYALERTS with the value 0, reinstall/repair your addin, then try running Excel again.

Answer 3

It looks like the problem is with your registry keys. Check out the following link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386106.aspx

Your Software\Classes and Software\Microsoft entries should be under the same key, either HKCU or HKLM. If you have one under HKCU and the other under HKLM, it messes up the addin.

So I think the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\ should be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins.

HTH...