Excel Add-In Create with VS2010 and Office 2010 Doesn't Work with Excel 2007

Question

Hi, there!

I created an Excel Add-In with VS2010/Office 2010 target to Excel 2010 and .Net Framework 3.5.

It works nice in this environment.

I installed it in other computer running Excel 2007 with .Net Framework 3.5. Excel load the add-in, but doesn' show it in the Ribbon (I can see it the Excel Available Add-in List ). No error message is showed.

I dont use any feature that is particular to Excel 2010.

As prerequisites at Setup Project, I checked:

- .Net Framework 3.5 SP1

- Microsoft Office 2010 Primary Interop Assemblies

- Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime (x86 and x64)

- Windows Installer 3.1

The detected Dependencies are:

- Microsoft .Net Framework

- Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.DLL

- Microsoft.Office.Interop.SmartTag.DLL

- Microsoft.Office.Tools.Common.v9.0.DLL

- Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.v9.0.DLL

- Microsoft.Office.Tools.Applications.Hosting.v9.0.DLL

- Microsoft.Office.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.v9.0.DLL

Any suggestion to solve this problem?

Best regard,

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Ciro

Answer 1

check few things:

- if you deploy your add-in by adding to HKLM registry entry about it, make sure that office 2007 has at least sp2 with patch for local machine registration http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976811 or above (so sp3 should be fine)

- verify that your msi bitness matches bitness of office installation (so you do not run 64 bit msi for 32 bit office)

Answer 2

Hi Ciro,

Thanks for posting in the MSDN Forum.

It's based on my experience that the add-in which developed under high Office version might not be compatible under low Office version due to them use different COM components, high version might have more interface in COM components. And when you invoke these interfaces which don't exist on low version will let to error. I would recommend you develop your add-in under lower Office version.

Have a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
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