I have created an excel custom function in SharedRuntime. I have used JavaScript 1.1 version and SharedRuntime 1.1 version. My custom function is working fine in office 365, but it's not working in offices 2013, 2016, and 2019.
I don't know why this is happening. Can anyone tell me where I am doing a mistake.
The shared runtime may not be supported on older Office versions. You can check out the minimum Office versions in the Shared runtime requirement sets section.
My client recently migrated from 32-bit Excel 2016 to 64-bit Excel under Office 365 and retained 32-bit MS Project Standard 2010.
I have VBA code native to MS Project Standard 2010 which manipulates the Excel 2016 Application by early binding via the Excel 16.0 Object Library reference. Following migration of Excel to the Office365 64-bit version the library reference to it (in MS Project Standard 2010) is no longer available. It is not MISSING it is just not available in the list. It won't even load by GUID. I don't have admin rights and can't inspect or edit the registry. My IT support explained that the issue is probably because we are mixing 32-bit and 64-bit applications.
I have worked round the issue by converting code from Early-binding to Late-binding. I probably didn't catch everything (I have created a very lot of code in a very lot of application tools) and my concern is that some feature of my code that has not been converted correctly may not be discovered for some time.
My question is, should the Project 2010 application (Project 14.0) be able to make reference to the 64-bit Excel 16 under Office365 Object Library? If so, what should my IT support guy be looking at to fix the problem please?
If the answer really is no I will just have to stick with the late-binding and do some extensive testing.
You cannot cross-reference between 64-bit libraries and 32-bit libraries in the same host. The host can only use libraries of the same bitness. Late-binding won't help you in this situation - it helps you where there are version mismatching but not when bitness don't match.
If you need to continue automation between Project and Excel, then you may need to have a 32-bit Excel installation, or consider installing 64-bit Project. There's the third option of shelling out to VBScript or Powershell and running it out of process but that can be a lot of work.
Recently Microsoft introduced the Office Add-ins architecture which allows for developing add-ins hosted remotely and run within IFrames inside office. I have read a lot trying to understand whether this architecture is meant as a replacement for VSTO or do they have separate use-cases. VS 2015 has templates for both.
In my specific case, I want to develop an add-in that extends Excel 2016 with custom import functionality (e.g. custom CSVs, TSV, or even XLSX). I can't tell which type of project I should go with.
Given the amount of legacy applications developed as COM and VSTO add-ins I find it hard to believe Microsoft would drop support within the next 10 years.
For me the most important differentiators of one approach vs. the other are:
COM/VSTO Office add-ins
Access to complete object model
Local machine interaction, e.g. file system
Available on Windows since Office 2007
JavaScript Office Add-ins
Portable between Windows, OS X, iOS etc. (not complete everywhere yet though)
Easy integration with online services
Easy distribution, no need to worry about installers
In your case I'd ask myself these questions:
Will there be a need to support other platforms besides Windows in the future? > JavaScript API
Are the requirements covered by the current JavaScript API implementation?
I've found that VSTO isn't 100% implemented either. I've given up developing VSTO for Project, got hit by too many issues. Instead I've developed everything in VBA and have perfected some neat ways to install, distribute and update VBA macros.
I have a requirement where in I need to scan Office documents and remove any metadata found embedded in the file/document. I am new to developing applications on Microsoft Office and found that I could either use the Platform Interop Assemblies or the OPENXML SDK to work with Office docs (word, excel and powerpoint).
However, I couldnt find any source/link which explains the difference between PIA and OPENXML. Could anyone please explain as to when which option needs to be looked at and which one is easy to work with (ie., less effort on learning curve)?
The huge problem with PIA is you will be dealing with COM interops unmanaged environment.
Here are the differences
It seems if you try to reference the Office COM objects (as you would do in other development environments), Visual Studio gets it wrong - and it just won't work.
So you must use the converted type library that Microsoft hand-converted and makes available for download, and download, and download.
Now it seems that in order for my application to run it needs the Office Interop code, which is contained in an assembly.
Now i don't want to force my customers to install the Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies, Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies or the Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies. i want an xcopy deployment.
If i manage to get a hold of Microsoft's copy of the interop assemblies, can i just copy them to by Bin/Debug and Bin/Release folders?
If i include the Office 2007 interop assemblies, will it work if the customer has Office 95 installed, or do i have to include all versions of the Office Interop dll's Microsoft has ever published?
This is a common question with a rather complicated answer. Mary Lee of MSFT is a great resource for information about this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/tags/Deployment/default.aspx
Using ClickOnce to deploy is the closest you are going to get to an XCopy install of any application built on VSTO.
Also, check this post:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsto/thread/1666d2b0-a4d0-41e8-ad86-5eab3542de1e/
Finally, Misha has a great blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mshneer/archive/2006/01/05/deployment-articles.aspx
The PIAs are specific to the version of Office you are targeting, so the 2003 PIAs are necessary for targeting 2003 and the 2007 PIAs are necessary for 2007. Automating Office 95 via managed code is something I have not done before, but I can imagine you are directly referencing the type libraries so a RCW is generated for you and has nothing to do with PIAs.
HTH
Colby Africa (MSFT)
From my own experience:
If you wanted to target Office 2003 and above, then you'd use the Office 2003 PIAs - and limit yourself to the Office 2003 API. The code would run on Office 2003 or later. You could still call Office 2007 functions using reflection, but that's not pleasant.
I imagine it's much the same story if your baseline version is Office 2000 - though I've not tried it, and I believe the earliest version for which Microsoft themselves provide PIAs is Office 2002 (XP).
You can create your own Interop assemblies for 2000, and I've no reason to believe that you can't do it for '95, though you're the first person I've ever seen ask for '95 support! It goes without saying that if you create your own Interop assemblies you'll need to deploy them with your application.
In any case, you want to use the highest Office version you can get away with as your baseline, so that you can support as many features as you can without resorting to reflection. You should develop your code on a machine which has only that version of Office installed.
In my case, I develop for Office 2003 and know that my users also have 2003. So, I ask them to ensure that they have the ".NET Programmability Support" feature enabled (which you can do via Office 2003 Setup via Add/Remove Programs if you choose the Change option). That option basically installs the PIAs to the GAC. For those users that can't do this, my setup program detects the lack of the PIAs and installs them prior to installing my application (as it does for the .NET framework).
XCOPY deployment? Yes, I'd like that too - but forget it. For one thing, if your add-in is going to work in 'high' security mode, then you're going to need a code-signed COM 'shim' to sit between your code and Office, and that needs to be registered. I believe VSTO provides its own shim, if you choose to go down that path (I didn't, since I needed to be able to 'drive' Office from scratch rather than relying on the user to start the application).
Deployment - and dealing with the installation & security issues - is one of the hardest parts of Office Add-in development with .NET, and it's a real kicker that it comes right at the end when you thought you were done.
My strong advice is to save yourself days and weeks of hassle, and look at Add-in Express. I've only recently come across this myself, and have been kicking myself ever since because it could have saved me so much time. It has several benefits that I think would be useful to you:
It allows you to create a single add-in targetting Office 2000 to Office 2007 (sorry, not '95), regardless of what version you happen to have on your development PC.
It creates an installer for you (which even works on Vista!), which in itself is worth the price.
It comes with its own COM shim, and is integrated to the extent that you don't need to worry about it.
It will allow you to have a single add-in that has a menu/toolbar interface in Office versions up to 2003, but a ribbon interface in 2007.
Note that I have no affiliation with Add-in Express (other than as a recent customer), but equally I've not yet converted my projects over to using it. The initial tests that I have done lead me to believe it's pretty good - and definitely the way to go for small to medium projects.
If i manage to get a hold of Microsoft's copy of the interop assemblies, can i just copy them to by Bin/Debug and Bin/Release folders?
It worked for me. When I compiled the program I had it reference the interop (PIA) dlls in the bin and then deployed it that way to the customer.
If i include the Office 2007 interop assemblies, will it work if the customer has Office 95 installed?
No, you mst have the interop dlls for the version of Word you are targeting. I suppose it might be possible to write your code so that it chcks the version of word running on that machine and at runtime chooses the correct interop, but you need to include them all.