How to enable "Trust access to the VBA project object model" during VSTO add-in setup?

[Thomas]

Hello developers,

How to enable Excel 2007 "Trust access to the VBA project object model"
option during VSTO add-in setup?
My add-in requires that this security option is enabled. I tell users to
manually turn this on before they run setup but some of them forget.
I hope this can be automated somehow. I searched Google but found nothing
about corresponding registry entry.

Thanks for any pointers

Thomas

 

[Patrick Molloy]

This is a security issue ... if you could do it with code, there would be no
security would there?

 

[Bob Phillips]

I am not familiar enough with VSTO, but I know it can't be done via code
with VBA, and I would think (hope!) it is the same in VSTO. The user should
determine whether they want to set it.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't speak VSTO, but I hope what you're asking for is not possible.

This is a security setting (my security setting!). Your program shouldn't be
able to change this. If your program can do it, then anyone (including malware)
could do it.

If you find a way to do this, I hope that you change the setting back to what it
was when you're done.

 

[Thomas]

I did not say I wanted to alter this settings from within Excel, perhaps
using VBA.
I believe it is stored somewhere in registry and can be changed as a part of
setup.

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

I am afraid I do not express myself clearly.

I wrote: "enable [...] option during VSTO add-in setup"
while most people trying to help (thank you) read it: change using VBA,
perhaps from within the Excel application.

Thomas

 

[Bob Phillips]

Altering it from anywhere amounts to the same thing.

 

[Dave Peterson]

And I didn't suggest that you were trying to alter the setting from within
excel.

I think it's a bad idea no matter what approach is used.

 

[Thomas]

This Excel setting can be changed with three lines of C# code.
Thomas

RegistryKey key =
Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security",
true);
key.SetValue("AccessVBOM", 1);
key.Close();

 

[Jie Wang [MSFT]]

Hi Thomas,

You found the right key. However, I suggest you not to do that in your
setup, instead, you can set the value in your add-in. That's because you're
operating the HKCU, which means this option is per user instead of machine
wide.

You may also consider put a warning dialog letting the users know about the
setting change, just like what VSTO does in design time.

I have a sample in the CodeFx project (http://cfx.codeplex.com/) called
CSVstoVBAInterop, which demonstrates the use of this setting and some VBA
interop features.

Regards,
Jie Wang

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[Thomas]

Many thanks, Jie. I will try that.
Thomas