Hi Paul,
We are developing an online application for a client. Some of the data would
be best viewed in an Excel environment. We can make it happen with a PIA,
but don't know what licensing issues would be involved. Is there a contact
number at Microsoft that could definitively answer our questions?
As long as the client has installed a licensed version of Excel on the machines
that run your software, you should be OK. Ideally, that installation would also
take care of installing the PIAs (although the .NET Framework would, of course,
need to be present first in order for the GAC to be available). The PIAs are
also available as a re-distributable - you just have to make sure a licensed
version of Office is available (that's the client's responsibility).
Here's an article written for VSTO that explains about preparing the end-user
computer. The basic information about installing the .NET Framework, installing
Office and re-distributing the PIAs is the same for any .NET application.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2ac08ee2.aspx
If you mean IA, not PIA (you've generated a set of Interop Assemblies using
TlbImp.exe for Excel 2000 or 97, for example), you can distribute these with
your application.
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org
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