Not a valid Office Add In

Question

I developed a new Office 2007 addin using VS 2008 and VSTO. after this I go to Office->Excel Options->AddIns->COM AddIns and GO... If I select the .dll which I ve created I get the error

'<path>' is not a valid Office Add In.

If I run it using the Visual Studio 2008 at my development machine, it works fine and I see the add-in.

I searched so many posts but didn't get a solution.

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 15 '12 at 04:47

Excel kept rejecting the Add-In, so the solution for me was doing it directly via the registry.

Save the below text as a .reg file, replace the Manifest path and FriendlyName to suit your PROJECT and double click the reg file to add the key to the Registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\PROJECTExcelAddIn]
"Manifest"="file:///C:\\TFS\\Pg.PROJECT\\PROJECTExcelAddIn\\Src\\PROJECTExcelAddIn\\PROJECTExcelAddIn\\bin\\Debug\\PROJECTExcelAddIn.vsto"
"FriendlyName"="PROJECTExcelAddIn"
"LoadBehavior"=dword:00000003
"Description"="PROJECTExcelAddIn - Excel add-in for PROJECT."

AMissico · Answer 2 · 2012-07-13T03:03:32.597

4

VSTO does not create COM Addins. You will need to install your add-in on non-development machines. The article Adding the Office Primary Interop Assemblies as a Prerequisite in your ClickOnce installer at http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2008/05/08/adding-the-office-primary-interop-assemblies-as-a-prerequisite-in-your-clickonce-installer-mary-lee.aspx will get you started.

edited Jul 13 '12 at 03:03

answered Sep 07 '09 at 09:18

AMissico

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This actually isn't true. VSTO does create COM AddIns. You will find the Add-Ins you create in VSTO residing in the COM Add-Ins in Microsoft Office. – Justin May 20 '14 at 21:00
@Justin Yes, but that is a wrapper in the VSTO run-time library created to call your CLR code. If you want your .NET Class to support COM, that is a whole other process. Do you have any references? – AMissico May 21 '14 at 05:08

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 17 '16 at 11:39

2

Actually, you'll have to publish the addin. Then, the Visual Studio will create a folder in Debug folder named app.publish folder with other folders in and, the important thing, a setup file named setup.exe.

answered Jun 17 '16 at 11:39

iviorel

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After spending half a day of searching, this worked. it gave me the option for where to place the `publish\` folder. in my case I am running windows 10 on Parallels through my Mac. – Cflux Jul 21 '20 at 00:55

Not a valid Office Add In

3 Answers3

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