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One of my add-ins, Formula Formatter, works well in Office 365. However, one client told me it cannot be loaded in Office Professional Plus 2016.

Does anyone know what may be the reason? Should we do something special in the manifest xml for Office Professional Plus 2016?

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Tie Cheng
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1 Answers1

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In its manifest, Formula Formatter specifies the requirement set ExcelAPI with a minimum version of 1.2. Per the documentation for that requirement set (https://dev.office.com/reference/add-ins/requirement-sets/excel-api-requirement-sets) your customer will need to be running "Version 1601 (Build 6741.2088) or later". Customers that have a non-subscription version of Office won't have that requirement set.

If you remove the requirement set from the manifest, your add-in would be available on Office 2016 but you would need to ensure that your add-in has a good user experience when they are not present.

Sean Laberee - Microsoft
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  • Thanks for your answer... I have several questions: 1) where did you see my `manifest.xml`? 2) `Customers that have a non-subscription version of Office won't have that requirement set.` ==> it seems that `Professional Plus 2016` is a non-subscription version, but it must have a version number, right? Are you saying that its version number must be less than `1601`? – Tie Cheng Dec 31 '17 at 21:17
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    1 - I used fiddler to view it while it was downloading to my office client. – Sean Laberee - Microsoft Jan 02 '18 at 06:05
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    2 - The documentation page states that the version number for Pro Plus 2016 is Office 2016 installed via MSI is 16.0.4266.1001 which I believe is 1509 or lower. I wouldn't expect these APIs to be in the MSI version. FWIW, we're having some good discussions about how to clarify our versioning story as it's too complicated right now. – Sean Laberee - Microsoft Jan 02 '18 at 06:12
  • I have some other questions: 3) if I remove totally the block of ``, does it mean users of Excel 2013 can see my add-in in their store? 4) If I modify the manifest xml and update the add-in, will it be re-validated by Office Store? I ask this question, because last time it took several weeks to validate an add-in... – Tie Cheng Jan 03 '18 at 04:39
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    3 - Removing the section will unblock your add-in from being available on Excel 2013. The best way to understand where its going to be loaded is to use the same tool as we use for validation (https://www.npmjs.com/package/office-addin-validator) That said, you may end up in a situation where your add-in has a runtime failure because the APIs aren't available. – Sean Laberee - Microsoft Jan 03 '18 at 07:18
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    4 - Yes, you'll need to submit to the Office store and it will be re-validated especially considering that it will be available on different versions of Excel than the previous version. I do apologize for the delay. – Sean Laberee - Microsoft Jan 03 '18 at 07:21
  • Another question is: 5) when the new manifest.xml and the newly changed add-in is being reviewed, what will happen to the existing version? Will the existing version keep working? – Tie Cheng Jan 03 '18 at 07:36
  • When you submit an update to your add-in, the existing version reamins available while the update is being validated. – Office Store Developer Comms Jan 08 '18 at 12:20