Developer Forum

Hi Everyone,

I am fairly new to office add-in development. I developed a outlook addin
with VS 2008 with shared add-in templated in C#. the plugin was developed for
both outlook 2003 and 2007. so in all the references within the project I
used all office version 11.

everything works fine. but the add-in won't load for office 2003. I used the
VS 2008's auto generated setup project to install this add-in in another 2
newly build machines. one with XP and office 2007 one with XP and office 2003
and office 2003 PIA (can someone tell me if a normal installation of office
2003 will install the PIA just like 2007 ? or I have to install the PIA
seperately?) My development machine has office 2007 installed so during
development I tested everything on outlook 2007

on the office 2007 machine, everything works fine. use the .msi file created
by the VS2008 and the add-in setup fine and loads correctly.

However on the office 2003 machine, the add-in won't load. it won't even
call the Connect method. I checked the registry entry. initially the load
behavior value in the registry was 3 right after the setup program finished.
however once I launch outlook then the registry value changed to 2. (I
installed office PIA already).

Now the funny part, since my development machine already has Office 2007
installed, so I can't test it on my dev machine. so I used the office 2003
machine as a Dev machine and installed VS 2008 on it and try to debug. but
once VS 2008 is installed, everything works fine. in VS debug mode, VS
release mode or clean all the builds and use the .msi file created on my
original dev machinea and install the add-in. it works fine on all the above
3 ways. then I uninstall VS 2008, everything won't work again. it seem VS
2008 has some files or reference or assembly which is needed to load the
addin and just installing office 2003 and PIA is not enough.

am I doing something wrong? anything I should know? I am totally lost now.

Thanks.

Office 2007 installs the PIA's if the Framework is already installed when
Office 2007 is installed unless a custom installation disables installation
of the PIA's. If the Framework is not installed Office 2007 doesn't install
the PIA's. The Framework is not required for Office 2007.

For Office 2003 the PIA's are installed only for a custom installation where
they are selected for installation.

The redistributable PIA package for Office 2007 includes extensibility and
stdole. The Office 2003 redistributable package for the PIA's does not
include either extensibility or stdole and those plus possibly a registry
lockback key need to be installed separately. There's a KB 908002 for that.

When you install VS you most likely got stdole and extensibility installed
for you during installation.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.yqcomputer.com/
Author: Professional Programming Outlook 2007.
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options.
http://www.yqcomputer.com/