Shared Add-in - Excel Add-in for Excel 2000/xp/2003

[Michael]

Hi,

I'm developing a shared add-in for Excel that needs to work across Office
2000/XP/2003. I'm developing it using Visual Studio 2003 and I'm using the
'Shared Add-in' project as a template.

What I need to know is what other issues will I face with getting this to
install and run for all users - I've heard that the COM to .NET layering used
to get this to work with .NET is very unreliable and that it was much more
reliable under VB6.

Regards

Michael

 

[XL-Dennis]

Hi Michael,

Developing a shared COM add-in with VB 6.0 is still the best approach since
it's COM based like Excel's Interface and we can set the reference to Excel
2000 ( i e early binding) and it will work with all the later versions
(including Excel 2007).

Developing a shared managed COM Add-in require You to:
- Use late binding in Your solution

In order to use the Add-in on the clients You need to make sure that the
following requirements can be met:
- .NET Framework 1.1 is installed
- Version specific PIA (Primary Interop Assembly) are installed. MSFT
provide us with PIAs for XP and 2003 but not for Excel 2000. In other words
You need to create Your own PIAs for Excel 2000.

The following article can also be of interest:
Problem: COM Automation across multiple COM versions
http://www.devcity.net/Articles/163/1/Articles.aspx?a=ViewArticle&ArticleID=163&Page=1

 

[Michael]

Hi,
the articles you reference suggest that the best approach if I must use .NET
is to develop against Office 2000 on a clean machine. This would allow for
early binding and should be forward compatible.

Don't know anything about PIAs - what are they ?

Regards
Michael

 

[XL-Dennis]

Michael,

Just to clear things with a quote from the article:

"...it does not work with VS.NET 2003/5 and Excel 2003"

If You look at the references in the article You will:
- Understand how to use the tlbimp tool
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ls/html/cpgrftypelibraryimportertlbimpexe.asp

In addition:
Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA) - Startpage
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aax7sdch.aspx