Debug Outlook VSTO Plugin from Visual Studio 2017 does not work --> debug not possible removing deployment from Outlook

Question

I created a VSTO Plugin for outlook (2016). During development i could press und debug then outlook started and I could debubg by plugin. Now I created a deployment and installed it in outlook. Then I removed the installation from outlook by hitting remove in the "Com-AddIns ... "

After that I restarted outlook and tried to Debug my plugin. Outlook still starts but it does not add the plugin to outlook? So I tried to install the plugin and then try to start debug from visual studio. Now it says that it could not install the plugin as there is already such a plugin installed.

After that I tried to manually add the Plugin dll by selecting "Add" from the dialog referred to above. I selected the dll from bin\Debug. Outlook says that this is not a proper outlook plugin

do you have any idea what I could do to be able to debug my outlook plugin again?

Best regards Hannes

Answer 1

I am such a stupid person:

First it is not sufficient to remove the plugin by using the COM-diaog. You need to remove it using System Settings. After the "old" plugin is removed completey from the system you need to reinstall the debug version. for this doubleclick on the *.vsto file in the bin\debug project of your visual studio project.

This should do the job.

Answer 2

You could use the "VSTOInstaller.exe " to uninstall your add-in. Please refer to the following link:

Uninstalling Office VSTO addins