Loading your OL addin without restarting OL

[Rahul Chandran]

I just downloaded the goto meeting addin and that install program installs
their addin adds toolbars to OL without requiring me to restart My outlook
any clue on how this is happening
How do you get OL to load your addin post startup

Thanks

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It's not good practice to ever install an Outlook addin when Outlook is
running, no matter what the installer allows. If an addin is installed and
registered then code can get a reference to the addin from the ComAddins
collection and once it has the reference it can set the Connect property to
True to force loading the addin.

 

[Rahul Chandran]

Ken thanks for answering m question. I just have a quick follow up

How will the addin show up in the com-addins collection of Outlook when OL
has not loaded it yet

the goto meetings behaviour is really interesting. you have OL running . you
install the addin
and voila toolbars appear in OL without restarting OL

SO i guess I am a litte confused , youre saying my installation code should
get the com -addins collection from the OL object model and even though its
not been loaded yet , it will show up ?
then call connect

IS that correct

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I don't know exactly what that addin or installer is doing, but I can guess.
If the installer installs the addin that registers it in either HKCU or HKLM
as an Outlook addin. Then if it has something like a custom action that is
called which checks to see if an Outlook session is running and if so it
gets the COMAddins collection. That should read all registered addins in
both HKCU and HKLM. Then the action could set Connect on the addin.

As I said that's all guesswork, but it most definitely is not a best
practice to have Outlook running when an addin is being installed. If this
is something you plan to implement for an addin of yours I'd highly
recommend that you reconsider your plan.