I've been able to make an Office Taskpane Add-In available within Word by placing the manifest XML file on a network folder. What I would like to do, however, is have the manifest file hosted on my webserver that hosts the Taskpane webapp as well and have Office grab the manifest from there.
I tried adding the URL to where the manifest file is hosted to the Trusted Web Add-In catalogs and I see it listed as a catalog of type "SharePoint" (while it's not a SharePoint site, just a regular old http host). My add-in also isn't showing up in Word.
Is there a way for me to host the manifest XML file on a regular webhost and have the add-in made available in Office?
You can side-load add-ins but it isn't recommended for production use. It makes updating the manifest rather tedious at any scale beyond 1or 2 users.
I recommend taking a look at Publish your Office Add-in. There are sever options beyond the network share method. For internal deployments
Related
Q1. Are there any method to distribute excel office add-in(w/ office.js) in privately?
(Will office.js add-in also be distributed like VSTO's .exe OR .xla/.xlam macro files with password?)
Q2. If I run office add-in server(node.js) on my on-premise server, What will have to be distributed to the end-users?
(I want to hide the core source logic unlike VBA macro.)
I am now developing an excel office add-in. But there seems to be some limitation to deploy to the end-users in my company.(We are now testing environment for pilot, and using office 365 but it is restricted by IT's policy)
When I refer to the official documentation below, the docs says that the way to deploy add-in in privately are Microsoft 365 admin center OR SharePoint catalog.(AppSource is publicly for everyone.)
refer. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/publish/publish
However, it seems that it have to use Microsoft's services or components like SharePoint or admin center. I don't want to use these items because I want to flexibly cope with various environments.
I have also read the article as below.
refer. How to distribute private office add-ins?
But the reply thread seems that the writer couldn't get the appropriate answer what I also want to know.
I want to know the other ways to distribute excel office add-in(w/ office.js) without unveiling my core source logic and what is the minimum materials I have to provide to the end-users(i.g. manifest or something).
Typically, as you have already know, you need to host the add-in's source code on the web server anywhere. The manifest file just refers to the place where the sources are stored. And the single file which should be provided to be able to side-load add-ins locally is the manifest file. Everything else is hosted under your control.
Due to the nature of the web technology you can't hide the source code from users. The add-in acts like a regular web page. The best what you could do is to obfuscate your code.
I'm playing with Excel Add-ins, and I'm not a specialist, so having read the documentation, I still find it complicated to publish and install it.
Basically, all I did was the very basic Excel Add-in described in the documentation and now I'm trying to figure out how to install it in Excel.
I see everywhere that this is vrey simple, all you have to do is to upload the XML manisfest file, etc. but using Visual Studio, I chose publish via FTP and I get 3 folders in my website:
Content
Functions
Scripts
These are full of js scripts, but I don't see the manifest file nor the home.css, Home.js and Home.html
Isn't it possible to just upload the files with Filezilla to a folder? Which files?
If so, then how do I install the addin in Excel?
Thank you so much for helping!
The manifest goes to a different place than the files in the web application part of the add-in. Please see this article and the links in it for the details of how to publish the web application and deploy the manifest: Deploy and Publish your Office Add-in.
UPDATE 1/10/19:
Some additional information in light of the OP's comments:
Please start with this article: Office Add-ins to get an overview. You will see that there are two main parts to an Office Web Add-in: (1) The manifest and (2) a web application.
The manifest can be sideloaded or deployed using several methods. For more information on publishing options, see this node of the documentation: Publish.
The web application can be published/hosted using any method or platform that you want. We don't give instructions for most methods because this information is already available on the web. However, this article, Host an Office Add-in on Microsoft Azure, explains how to do it on Azure. I recommend that you try that method of hosting first. Note that in step 6, you edit the manifest to point to the URL of your web app. When you feel familiar with the distinction between hosting the web app and deploying the manifest, you can try an alternate method of hosting the web app. No matter which method you choose, you will edit the manifest in the same way.
I have recently published an Outlook Add-in (simple one task pane firing an API call with inserting text received back).
Now I am interested in developing the same for the other Office products (Word, Excel , etc).
I was wondering if it is possible to have, let's say, a Word manifest, Excel manifest and Outlook manifest all pointing to the same web project but different folders in the project.
The standard way of having an add-in that works on multiple Office host applications is to have multiple <host> sections in a single manifest (one host for each Office application). That said, I think it is possible in principle to have separate manifest files (which means, in effect, separate add-ins) for each host application. The critical thing is to make sure that the various URL values in each manifest point to the appropriate place for that add-in. If you haven't already, be sure you are familiar with the documentation about the manifest XML.
#rick-kirkham I have managed to create multiple manifest files with one web project holding the different folders to which the manifests point. I currently have an Outlook, Word and Excel add-in using the same web project.
One thing I had to do is remove the reference in the manifest file project that points to the web folder.
Let's take Excel for example. In Excel 2016, when I select an add-in in the STORE, after clicking on Trust It, will the code (.html, .js files) of the add-in be downloaded or installed on my machine?
In other words, have the add-ins under MY ADD-INS been already installed on my machine, such that i could load and run them without Internet (if an add-in does not send or receive special data to or from Internet)?
I am asking this question, because i want to know if a basic add-in always requires Internet access to work.
As Eric mentions, Office add-ins are indeed web based. However, to add a bit to his answer:
While you definitely need a one-time access to fetch the manifest and the original HTML/JS/CSS files, if your add-in is not using license checking (it's free) and does not require web services, you should be able to make a website that uses standard offlining techniques to load with no internet connection after the first time.
I tried it out real quick with pointing a manifest at http://html5demos.com/offlineapp. After loading it once and then disconnecting my internet, I was still able to load that page.
Hope this helps,
~ Michael
Yes, the new Office add-ins are web-based. They are all defined - and installed - by a manifest file which specifies the URL location of the web source files. These are always hosted on the provider's web server and are not cached for offline use. The licensing system used by most add-ins (the ones that aren't free) requires a connection to the provider's web server which in turns needs to verify the user's license against the Office Verification Licensing Service. If offline use was enabled users could use a trial license in perpetuity without the provider being aware.
We're in the process of converting a legacy desktop application into a web enabled equivalent.
However one feature is causing difficulty, editing MS Word documents.
Current proposed solution is publishing the DOC and DOCX files via WebDAV and using a custom ActiveX component to launch WinWord and pointing it at a file via a URL.
This works but it's limited in scope and the worlds moved on since it was conceived.
Is is possible to use the new Office Web Apps to do this completely in-browser?
So, still publish DOC files via WebDAV, but only to a web server hosting the Office Web Apps and redirecting the user to a URL rather than launching a local windows exe via activex.
Can you do this with the new Office Web Apps?
Where is the documentation on how to achieve this?
Yes, you can launch editing of MS Office documents from a web browser, using the sharepoint dll available in IE:
Eg
Set EditDocumentButton = CreateObject("SharePoint.OpenDocuments.3")
strDocument = 'http://localhost:8080' + strDocument;
EditDocumentButton.EditDocument(strDocument)
If your server is running java you can use Milton (http://milton.io) to integrate directly into your business app and edit the document in place.