Creating Shared Add-Ins compatible with Word 2003 and 2007

[craigeandrews]

Hi all,

I am about to undertake a project developing an add-in for Word 2003
and Word 2007. I have worked with the Ribbon via VBA before now, but
not from a managed C# add-in. After looking around, it seems to be the
case that it is not possible to have an add-in that implements the
IRibbonExtensibility interface *and* will work with Office 2003,
dynamically creating traditional command bar based toolbars and menus
or a ribbon tab depending which version of Word loads it.

Is this conclusion correct, or is there a technique that will allow me
to put Word 2003 and Word 2007 UI functionality into the same add-in?
This would be ideal from a deployment point of view, but if it can't
be done I'll just extract the add-in functionality into an assembly or
two and write simple UI-only add-ins that make use of them.

Thanks,

Craig

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

I am about to undertake a project developing an add-in for Word 2003

and Word 2007. I have worked with the Ribbon via VBA before now, but
not from a managed C# add-in. After looking around, it seems to be the
case that it is not possible to have an add-in that implements the
IRibbonExtensibility interface *and* will work with Office 2003,
dynamically creating traditional command bar based toolbars and menus
or a ribbon tab depending which version of Word loads it.

Is this conclusion correct, or is there a technique that will allow me
to put Word 2003 and Word 2007 UI functionality into the same add-in?
This would be ideal from a deployment point of view, but if it can't
be done I'll just extract the add-in functionality into an assembly or
two and write simple UI-only add-ins that make use of them.

Make sure your add-in uses the 2007 PIAs, and make sure to deploy those
along with the add-in. I suggest deploying the actual DLLs instead of
the standalone PIA installer. If you use the VS setup project, it will
automatically add those DLLs to it and install them for you. Have your
connect.cs file implement IRibbonExtensibility.
Then deploy this to a machine that has only 2003 file installed and give
it a try. I know for sure that this works on machines with 2003 and 2007
installed, but I have never tried it with just 2003.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
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Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
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[Lusana]

am also keen to see if it will work on a machine with only 2003 installed.

to deploy the dlls themselves do you simply add a reference and in
properties set "save to local" to true?