office pia's

[thurlowe Riley]

I have made a small addin with VB.net that does nothing but shows a msgbox on
Connection. I am using officeXP as well as Office 2003.

After building the project and installing it works great. UNTIL I try to
install it on a mahcine that does not have Visuyal Studios installed.
I ahve been rading about the Pia's for 3 days and everyone is conflicting on
how to install them, which ones to install (XP or 2003 Pia's) and weather to
put them in the application folder or to put then in the GAC.
can someone Please walk me throught this.
--

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?dGh1cmxvd2UgUmlsZXk=?=,

I have made a small addin with VB.net that does nothing but shows a msgbox on
Connection. I am using officeXP as well as Office 2003.

After building the project and installing it works great. UNTIL I try to
install it on a mahcine that does not have Visuyal Studios installed.
I ahve been rading about the Pia's for 3 days and everyone is conflicting on
how to install them, which ones to install (XP or 2003 Pia's) and weather to
put them in the application folder or to put then in the GAC.
can someone Please walk me throught this.

Well, each version should install its own PIAs. For Word 2003, this will be done
automatically as part of the Setup IF the .NET Framework is already installed.
If the Framework isn't present, the PIAs must be installed explicitly using a
"Change" type of setup from the Control Panel/Add Remove programs.

Office XP cannot install PIAs. They must be downloaded from the msdn site and
installed (again, after the .NET Framework has been installed). If you're going
to be distributing a solution, you can include both sets of PIAs (MS provides a
"distributable package") in the resources.

Usually, PIAs are installed to the GAC, never locally. They're a shared resource
that every .NET programmer can use.

If you want to completely avoid the issue of PIAs you could alter your code to
not reference the office libraries at all, just use late-binding.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[thurlowe Riley]

My problem may not be the pia's.
I make a simple addin with .net that does nothing.
It installs correctly on a machine without VS and I look at the load
behavior in the reg for the PowerPoint addins and it is a 3 as it should be.
I run PowerPoint
I check the reg and it changed to a loadBehavior of 2.
I have no code in the project so I dont see what else could error .
And of course I get no errors.
Try it.
The load behavior changes.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?dGh1cmxvd2UgUmlsZXk=?=,

My problem may not be the pia's.
I make a simple addin with .net that does nothing.
It installs correctly on a machine without VS and I look at the load
behavior in the reg for the PowerPoint addins and it is a 3 as it should be.
I run PowerPoint
I check the reg and it changed to a loadBehavior of 2.
I have no code in the project so I dont see what else could error .
And of course I get no errors.

Even though VS isn't installed on the machine, I'm going to assume the correct
version of the .NET Framework (the same one in which you created your Addin)
is.

Also, that you've used caspol or the Admin tools to grant the proper TRUST to
your .NET Addin in the .NET Framework.

Managed code Addins all share the same "domain" unless a SHIM is used. If one
of these Addins has a problem, making it so it can't load, then none of the
managed Addins in the domain will load. All will be disabled.

If you go into Powerpoint, Help/About, you'll find a button with "Disabled
items". Anything listed in there?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[thurlowe Riley]

This is driving me NUTS.
If I make an addin for any office app, should it not work?
I have the same .net 2.0 on the developer machine and the test machine, I
have no code in the addin. Nothing!
I tried signing it with a strong name.
I have tried with a shim, without a shim.
Tried sample projects from the net for Word and Powerpoint and Outlook.
None of it works.
They all change the load behavior to 2 when the app starts .
They are not comming up in the Disabled Items list.
if anyone can make a simple addin from vb.net 2005 that will work on a
machine that has no Visual Studios installed. tell me how you got it to work.
Oh and I have used three diff test machines so I have isolated that it is
not a bad setting in my test machine.

I am three weeks trying to get a addin to just load with out failing.

Can someone Please Try it an let me know what I am doing wrong.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?dGh1cmxvd2UgUmlsZXk=?=,

This is driving me NUTS.
If I make an addin for any office app, should it not work?
I have the same .net 2.0 on the developer machine and the test machine, I
have no code in the addin. Nothing!
I tried signing it with a strong name.
I have tried with a shim, without a shim.
Tried sample projects from the net for Word and Powerpoint and Outlook.
None of it works.
They all change the load behavior to 2 when the app starts .
They are not comming up in the Disabled Items list.
if anyone can make a simple addin from vb.net 2005 that will work on a
machine that has no Visual Studios installed. tell me how you got it to work.
Oh and I have used three diff test machines so I have isolated that it is
not a bad setting in my test machine.

In all the things you list, you don't say anything about setting the TRUST on
the target machine. In Powerpoint: Tools/Macro/Security. What is the setting
and the state of the checkboxes?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?dGh1cmxvd2UgUmlsZXk=?=,

This is driving me NUTS.
If I make an addin for any office app, should it not work?
I have the same .net 2.0 on the developer machine and the test machine, I
have no code in the addin. Nothing!

One more thought. What SP and hotfixes are installed on these Word 2003
machines? See

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907417/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908002/en-us

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[michael]

I got the same problems like Riley.

I try to create a Setup Project für a Word Add-in (written in VB.net
without VSTO) but if i run the setup on a machine without a visual
studio installation; word can not load the add-in.

is there a way to see more about how word loads this add-in.. maybe a
log file with detailed errors?

this office things drive me crazy... O_x