This is hardly the first time this question has been asked, but there are no completely satisfactory answers that have been presented, and nearly ALL of them rely upon Microsoft's error-laden developer documentation.
After creating a vb.net VSTO Excel Template project using Visual Studio 2019 with Office 2016 and porting exiting VBA code to vb.net, I have run into a brick wall. I was able to convert the code to vb.net without too much trouble, and thanks to the .net libraries, I was able to include additional functionality that before was impossible with VBA (e.g. Action Panel menus, etc.). But now I cannot distribute the solution to my employees because I cannot create a setup file that will allow the template code to run correctly when the resulting document is saved to any location other than where it was first installed.
I have tried using the supposedly simple ClickOnce method. I have tried the Windows Installer method. We don't have a Sharepoint server (we are a small company) and I don't want to learn how to create one. I have followed the examples at
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/deploying-an-office-solution-by-using-windows-installer?view=vs-2019
and
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/deploying-an-office-solution-by-using-clickonce?view=vs-2019
and
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/deploying-a-vsto-solution-by-using-windows-installer?view=vs-2019#to-build-the-setup-project
and several other Microsoft Visual Studio VSTO instructional articles to no avail. I still cannot get the resulting template file to reference the necessary libraries when the template is moved or saved to any location on a user's computer other than its original install folder. This pretty much makes the solution useless to me. You would think something this important to so many VBA users would be a priority to Microsoft, but it clearly is not. Microsoft refuses to fix/update its documentation, and it ignores vb.net like Microsoft's own policies had nothing to do with why so many of us use it.
I would post my code, but I have no idea what code, in what has now become a rather complicated solution, is causing the problem. My only clue is the error message, which appears whenever the Excel workbook is saved somewhere else and states that "my solution".vsto could not be downloaded because Office is looking under where the template is now stored rather than the original installation directory.
Related
So i have this typical problem of distributing an Access application to a client. The application is written in Access 2010 and recently i addded some code to export Excel sheets. Therefore i added the excel object library version 14.0.
My clients that run Excel 2007 cannot run the application anymore getting the infamous error: "mssing or broken reference to the file excel exe version 1.7". The question is this:
If i use LateBinding, will the added functionality be available to them ?
I wish to apologise if the question sounds naive but i am new to VBA.
Yes, the functionality should be available, UNLESS you use features that were not available in 2007 (Some table theme formatting using patterns for example is 2010plus) then you should have no issues using late binding.
I guess the easiest is to simply try. Ideal would be to have a virtual PC running Office 2007 and develop using that, when you are targeting client using a lower version than yourself.
Hope that helps.
Do any of you have advice on methods for deploying an office VSTO addin, especially Excel, that makes it easy to update and deploy the document as well as the addin.
I have a document level addin for Excel 2010 that I created using VSTO. I currently deploy it using click once. However, this has a few problems. The first problem is that I publish it to ftp then users install it from my website. Since the document and addin are downloaded from the internet, I obviously have trouble getting proper permission for the addin to run and the document to be trusted. Currently I just have users manually adjust permissions and grant access when the solution is installed. That part works and is fine, but if any of you have suggestions on how to automate this that would be great.
The second problem, the main one I am wanting help with in this post, is deploying updates. I generally like using clickonce because of its ease of installation and automatic update features. The solutions I develop are used in rapidly growing fast changing companies, which means I am often making updates. Click once makes it easy enough to update the "code" or addin itself. I just have it automatically check for updates when it is started, and if there are updates it will prompt the user to download them. But what about the document? My solution doesn't only include the code. It also includes the highly customized Excel workbook.
When the solution is initially installed a copy of the workbook is just downloaded to the local computer. But what about after it is deployed to dozens of computers? Does a document level change (adding a column for example) mean going to each computer and downloading the updated workbook manually?
Surely there is a better way to automatically deploy updated versions of the workbook. Any suggestions?
Here are a few ideas I thought of:
Use some installer other than clickonce. Any suggestion on one that allows easy automatic updates?
Somehow package the workbook as an application resource. I have actually done this in some situations, but not in cases where the document itself included a VSTO addin.
Related to the previous idea. Make a "wrapper" project that includes the workbook & VSTO addin. Then the addin would be launched by clicking on a regular icon on the desktop, which would download the workbook (if an update was needed) then open it in Excel. I would prefer that method of launch over simply opening the workbook anyway.
Note: No user data needs to be preserved in the Workbook when an update is done. The old version could simply be overwritten by the new one. The workbook gets all its data from an SQL server.
You could use a Visual Studio Setup Project which leverages Windows Installer. See this deployment walkthrough guide on using VSTO 4.0.
In Visual Studio 2012, support for Setup Projects is being deprecated in favor of InstallShield LE which is another alternative.
I've built a simple Excel tool that uses the additional Calendar Control(mscal.ocx). Everything worked out fine, on different systems, however, the calendar seems not to be implemented and instead of just not showing the date picker, the whole form crashes.
Is there a way to implement the calendar control so that it runs on every system? Or do I have to code a datepicker myself?
(Office12)
Whenever you're using controls that aren't native to all operating systems and versions of excel, you're asking for trouble on other computers. Often, when developing, you'll have access to forms that don't exist on most systems, and only exist on yours because you have Visual Studio installed, or a special Microsoft Office package. Whenever such a problem occurs you have 3 choices:
Work your ass of to try and package the missing controls (mscal.ocx), and try to create a deployment script for your users which will copy it to the System32 directory and register it. This is a pain because there is usually a large chain of dependencies for a single control.
Deal with the fact that some systems won't support your tool and warn users upfront or provide a virtual machine that they can access that and that your tool will run on.
Reinvent whatever fancy control you're using with basic buttons, list-boxes, drop-downs, images, etc, which is the biggest pain of all and often requires you to compromise some nice functionality.
I've had to do number 3 countless times for excel 2007 tools that work on XP systems, but not Vista+ where certain ActiveX controls (i.e. Datagrid) are no longer supported.
i would build against Excel 10 (2003) as not everyone might have new Office 12 (2010).
or see if you can reference that ocx locally and deploy with your excel file
You can do this without the calendar controls.
Like this example here
I was wondering, if I don't have excel office product not installed on my server, how can I write to an excel document using .net code? I know there's a Microsoft.Inerop.Excel assembly that will assits in this, but it doesn't work for me. I get a CLSID id error where is looking for this particualr guid, but its not installed on my machine. I have the Interop assemblies installed on my server, but I can't use the Excell.Application object. Is there another object that i can use instaed of Excel.Application() to create an excel document on a server where the offce excel product is not installed on? Also my box is 64 bit running SharePoint, if you have any alteratives using SharePoint 2010 I would like to hear about them as well.
Thank You,
There are several Third Party tools, commercial ones like Spire.xls (which we have used, and it works quite well) and freeware, like excellibrary (http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/).
This has been asked before, see Create Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file from C# (guess someone may close that question).
with the push to leverage visual studio and dotnet with office based solutions, especially excel, where is the best article or information on how having office sheet with additional binaries and assemblies is sharable.
Do this external code get packaged with the spreadsheet
what if people start emailing the spreadsheet around. Is there any overhead of this additional assemblies. Is there risk of the binaries getting detached from the spreadsheet
It seems like microsoft has been pushing VSTO for over 5 years now but you read lots of mixed reviews and issues. Are we at the point where companies that do large VBA excel solutions can fully migrate over to dotnet without any real worries?
First of all, I want to answer your question on whether or not VSTO is ready for larger implementations. The answer is YES! Especially if the alternative is VBA. You have the entire .Net framework available, you can use web services, ADO.Net (better still, with the enterprise library). You can still write code that looks a lot like VBA, but is much more powerful. You can get more information by reading Walkthrough: Creating Your First Document-Level Customization for Excel. This page will give you an idea of what VSTO features are available to you.
Now, to answer your question on deployment.
It depends on whether you are making an Add-In or a document level customization. If its an Add-In, then you must install it on each client, and any passing around of documents will not effect that (Add-Ins are at the application level, and not at the individual document level).
I assume that you are talking about a document level customization, so I will center my answer around that.
When you create a document level customization, the assemblies are not loaded into the excel file (as they are with VBA). Instead, a document property is added telling the application that this document contains a manifest file (and tells it of the manifest file's location). The manifest file contains links to the assembly that makes up your customization.
As with any .Net application, there are sometimes other (referenced) assemblies that also need to be deployed. Not always are these assemblies in the GAC, so they would have to be located in the same folder as your executing assembly (in this case, your customization assembly). You don't necessarily have to place your assemblies in the same location as your excel file, though.
There are a few ways you can deploy the customization.
You can store all of the assemblies and the excel file in a folder and run the application that way (if the excel file is passed around, the users must pass around the entire folder).
You can run an setup program that installs the assemblies to a specific folder on the users computer, and specifies the manifest at that location (if the excel file is passed around, the users must also pass around the setup program).
You can install the assemblies in a network location and specify in the document properties, that the manifest and the assemblies are all at that network location (if the excel file is passed around, nothing needs to be passed along with it - but there are security settings that need to be made. Read this page for more information).
Any way that you decide to do this, here is the page you need to read in order to understand the document properties that enable the customization.
You need to make sure all of your users have the prerequisites installed. The easiest way to do this is to give them all a setup program. If you create a setup project for your customization, you can setup the bootstrapper to automatically install the prerequisites. You can also do this if you use ClickOnce to install the customization. This page will give you all the information you need to know regarding deployment.
Here are some other helpful links you will need to see:
Application Manifests for Office Solutions (2007 System)
Deployment Manifests for Office Solutions (2007 System)
Application and Deployment Manifests in Office Solutions
I hope this helps. Once you read all of this information, I think you'll agree that VSTO is a much better choice than VBA. You just have to plan your deployment carefully.
I created a Excel add-on and deployed it to a server. Then I passed around two links, the setup.exe file and the link to the actual Workbook. The workbook file never changed - it's purpose was to open and load the add-on which was now in the user's Add/Remove Programs. The add-on itself would check for updates on startup.
So if they start emailing the workbook around, great! I believe in theory, the workbook would download the add-on if it was missing, but I don't have a fresh computer around to test that. If it doesn't, it's just a simply exe to install (which will update on launch anyhow, so outdated isn't an issue).
For document-level deployment, I recommend the following three links:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms268758(v=vs.90).aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff937654.aspx
How do you assign the Assembly Location of an Excel VSTO Installation?
Unlike application-level solution, document-level has 2 special properties: _AssemblyLocation and_AssemblyName, which indicate the *.vsto position. To set these properties by install path, a custom action project should be created to record the target path when installing, and packaged together with setup.exe. Then you could put your excel file anywhere (on local machine) and open it in the correct way.