Office development with Visual Studio 2010 (VSTO), things to consider

3
votes

I'm still confused by the different versions of VSTO and in which way they are compatible to office 2007/2010. I know there is a nice table for comparisons on wikipedia, but I still don't get it. My focus lies on PowerPoint.

Okay, so I have the Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition that provides two templates for PowerPoint: a 2007 Add-In template and a 2010 Add-In template. What exactly is the difference here, is it just the version of the underlying VSTO? Apart form that, is there a difference between VSTO 4.0 and VSTO 2010? Wikipedia uses both terms.

I want the Add-In to work with both PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. Should I chose the 2007 Add-in project type or the 2010 add-in project type?

Wikipedia says: "Office 2007 applications can also use the VSTO 2010 runtime" and it also says "VSTO solutions developed against newer Office versions will not work in older Office versions as they lack the necessary Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs)".

Isn't that some kind of contradiction?

2
c#.netvstoms-office
I like Wikipedia too, but maybe you should ask Microsoft this question before asking Wikipedia? See social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsto/threads. - John Saunders
Thanks, you're right, I switched to msdn - alapeno
Just read the table VSTO 4.0 is Built into Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above and VSTO 3.0 is Built into Visual Studio 2008 Professional and above Office 2007 supoprts VSTO 3.0/4.0 Office 2010 only supports VSTO 4.0 - Security Hound
my add in developed for Office 2007/VSTO 3.0 works on Office 2010 with VSTO3 and VSTO4 installed (surprisingly, both of them are required) - surfen

2 Answers

5
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below image should be helpful

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1
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A VSTO project will work only with the selected version and later i.e. a 2007 add-in will work with Office 2007 and 2010, whereas a 2010 add-in will work with only 2010.

When deciding which version to choose for an add-in, choose the version of the oldest Office version you want to support.