Question about .NET and PIA's

[Dave Townsend]

Ok, so I'm a little lost with developing against other libraries. My
understanding at the moment is that when you develop a managed addin for
office you should do so referencing the PIA. The PIA's for office 2003
come with the CD (and according to microsoft should not be distributed).
The PIA's for office XP are downloadable (and can be distributed). I've
also seen talk of PIA's for office 2000.

Now according to microsoft you should compile referencing the PIA's for
the office platform you are targetting. Surely this is a ridiculous
notion? I am trying to develop an addin that should be deployed in
outlook 2000, 2002 and 2003. How should I handle this? Should I have 3
different projects, one for each outlook version each compiling against
different PIA's? As it goes, the code I have written seems to work on
all 3 versions as it stands but I could well be missing something.

Also, what should happen with the PIA's. The setup in VS.NET
automatically packages the PIA's into the installer and installs them in
the addin directory. Is this right, should the PIA's go into the GAC?

Any help would be appreciated.

Dave

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Ok, so I'm a little lost with developing against other libraries. My
understanding at the moment is that when you develop a managed addin for
office you should do so referencing the PIA. The PIA's for office 2003
come with the CD (and according to microsoft should not be distributed).
The PIA's for office XP are downloadable (and can be distributed). I've
also seen talk of PIA's for office 2000.

Now according to microsoft you should compile referencing the PIA's for
the office platform you are targetting. Surely this is a ridiculous
notion? I am trying to develop an addin that should be deployed in
outlook 2000, 2002 and 2003. How should I handle this? Should I have 3
different projects, one for each outlook version each compiling against
different PIA's? As it goes, the code I have written seems to work on
all 3 versions as it stands but I could well be missing something.

Also, what should happen with the PIA's. The setup in VS.NET
automatically packages the PIA's into the installer and installs them in
the addin directory. Is this right, should the PIA's go into the GAC?

Any help would be appreciated.

Dave

This question has been asked before. The solution:

I think you may try to create a new blank solution and then add three new
projects and then add reference per project.

My understandin is that the PIA's are distributable and that they should go
into the GAC. I also think Office 2003 will install them but not Office XP.
David Thielen has built PIA's for Office 2000.

/ Fredrik

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Ok, so I'm a little lost with developing against other libraries. My
understanding at the moment is that when you develop a managed addin for
office you should do so referencing the PIA. The PIA's for office 2003
come with the CD (and according to microsoft should not be distributed).
The PIA's for office XP are downloadable (and can be distributed). I've
also seen talk of PIA's for office 2000.

Now according to microsoft you should compile referencing the PIA's for
the office platform you are targetting. Surely this is a ridiculous
notion? I am trying to develop an addin that should be deployed in
outlook 2000, 2002 and 2003. How should I handle this? Should I have 3
different projects, one for each outlook version each compiling against
different PIA's? As it goes, the code I have written seems to work on
all 3 versions as it stands but I could well be missing something.

Also, what should happen with the PIA's. The setup in VS.NET
automatically packages the PIA's into the installer and installs them in
the addin directory. Is this right, should the PIA's go into the GAC?

Any help would be appreciated.

Dave

This question has been asked before. The solution:

I think you may try to create a new blank solution and then add three new
projects and then add reference per project.

My understandin is that the PIA's are distributable and that they should go
into the GAC. I also think Office 2003 will install them but not Office XP.
David Thielen has built PIA's for Office 2000.

/ Fredrik

 

[Dave Townsend]

This question has been asked before. The solution:

My understandin is that the PIA's are distributable and that they should go
into the GAC. I also think Office 2003 will install them but not Office XP.
David Thielen has built PIA's for Office 2000.

/ Fredrik

So this means that I have to make 3 different installations of the same
project available? It also requires that my customers know what version
of Outlook they are installing to (which given the IT skills of my
customers is extremely unlikely).

What happens if someone with my addin installed on, say, Outlook 2000,
then upgrades to Outlook 2002. They would then be running an addin
compiled against the Office 2000 PIA's in office 2002. So do they then
have to install a different version of the addin at this point?

All in all it seems a pretty shoddy way of doing things to me.

Dave

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

So this means that I have to make 3 different installations of the same
project available? It also requires that my customers know what version
of Outlook they are installing to (which given the IT skills of my
customers is extremely unlikely).

What happens if someone with my addin installed on, say, Outlook 2000,
then upgrades to Outlook 2002. They would then be running an addin
compiled against the Office 2000 PIA's in office 2002. So do they then
have to install a different version of the addin at this point?

All in all it seems a pretty shoddy way of doing things to me.

Dave

Yes, you have to do three different installations if you necessarily want
your add-in to be a .NET add-in. you won't have this problem if you use VB6.
The installer - if you have one - should check the version of outlook and
install the right one.

If someone makes an upgrade, they will have to install a different version
of your add-in

All in all it seems a pretty shoddy way of doing things to me.

I agree 100% It seems this is a problem that developers of .NET add-in will
have to live with for some time. I guess things will change when Office is
re-written as .NET applications.

/ Fredrik

 

[Dave Townsend]

I could only find the Word 2000 PIA's compiled by David Thielen. Any
idea if the Outlook (or full office) ones are available elsewhere?
Unfortunatly the only installation of office 2000 I have handy right now
is on a 98 box which the .NET framework won't run on so no tlbimp

Dave

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

I could only find the Word 2000 PIA's compiled by David Thielen. Any
idea if the Outlook (or full office) ones are available elsewhere?
Unfortunatly the only installation of office 2000 I have handy right now
is on a 98 box which the .NET framework won't run on so no tlbimp

Dave

Right. I forgot that. Hopefully, David did provide some kind of information
on how to build the PIA. Have another look at his site. I think Imentioned
that it would be easier for you to make a VB6 add-in. Is there any
particular reason you want it to be wriiten in VB.NET? An alternative
approach is to make the add-in in VB6 and have it call a VB.NET dll that
implements most or all of the logic.

/ Fredrik

 

[David Thielen]

The bat file in the zip I put up there should point you at how to do the
outlook ones - but yes you need a system with Windows XP and Office 2000 on
it. But you need that for your testing too don't you?

thanks - dave

ps - I have built 3 versions of my add-in (2000/XP/2003) but I have tested
the 2000 version on all 3 versions of Office and the XP on XP and 2003 and it
works. So I am not too worried about upgrades.