KB suggestion - how to debug shim/start issues

[David Thielen]

I strongly encourage that someonw rite a KB article on the following:

Give user’s a way to debug problems when an add-in won’t start, both
directly and using the COM shim. Presently there appears to be no way to find
out why starting an add-in fails. For one example, my nant script wasn’t
successfully strong naming my assemblies. So they didn’t load. After 4 hours
of very carefully going over everything several times I found it. But it
would have been trivial if somewhere I got an error message that the failure
was due to the assemblies not being strong named. Just some method to expose
the errors.

thanks - dave

 

[David Thielen]

BTW - here is a help guide I put together for our users (yes it sucks to have
to ask user's to do things like this - but it's the best we have come up
with).

http://www.windwardreports.com/ati/AutoTagInstall.htm

thanks - dave

 

[Peter Huang]

Hi

Based on my search, there is no such a KB about such a specified scenario.
So far from my experience, as we talk about the com-addin load procedure in
another post.
Subject: How an add-in starts - I think I have it
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.office.developer.com.add_ins

We can try to check in which steps did the addin load failure.
In the first steps, we can use the regmon on the www.sysinternals.com
website to monitor if there is any registry problem with the addin.
Also we can try to comment out all the code in the addin to isolate the
problem.

If you still have any concern, please feel free to post here.


Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[David Thielen]

Can you please suggest to the Word group that they do create such a KB
article? This is IMO the most difficult and frustrating part of creating an
add-in.

thanks - dave

 

[Peter Huang]

Hi Dave,

I think you may try to submit a wish to out mswish website. Our product
team will browse and evaulate the wish and take action.

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Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.