VB.NET 2005 and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook - what to deploy?

[NB]

We have written a VB.NET 2005 application that references the
Microsoft Outlook 11.0 Object Library (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook).

I have searched and have been unsuccessful in finding out what to deploy with our application to ensure that the email application will work. Specifically, do we need to include the
Microsoft Outlook 11.0 Object Library dll in the application folder with our VB.NET application?

We did some testing here on a machine that did not have Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook in the global assembly cache(GAC). Nor did we have the dll in our application folder. Yet, when we ran our application, it added the following two objects to the GAC:

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
Microsoft.Office.Interop.OutlookViewCtl

Can anyone explain to me how our VB.NET app added these to the GAC?

Do we need to distribute these in our VB.NET app?

How should the reference properties of Copy Local and Isolated be set for this reference?

I know...lots of questions, but we want to understand how this works. Thank you.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It is illegal to deploy any of the Outlook dll's from MS. The PIA's that
should be tested for or installed should be the redistributable PIA's
available for download from MS. Installing those PIA's if not already
installed requires administrative permissions to install in the GAC.

Your addin installer should test for the Outlook and Office PIA's by using a
bootstrapper or whatever your installer uses. If the PIA's are not installed
the bootstrappers should also be testing for admin permissions. The
installation should fail if no admin permissions are present and
installation to the GAC is required. Your installation should also fail or
install the PIA's (and any other requirements such as stdole.dll and
extensibility.dll) if they are missing.

If you are running a dev machine the project will install the PIA's if
needed for the dev machine. That does not happen with deployed projects, you
need to take care of that as well as testing for whatever version of Windows
installer you are using and whatever version of the Framework you are using.

You should google for installer walkthroughs for whatever type of code you
are working on (shared or VSTO addin or standalone program).