Find directory of files that are deployed with a VSTO

Question

I am developing an outlook addin with VSTO for Outlook 2016.

In my deployment, I have a config file which is located in the same directory as the .dll and the .vsto files, aswell as all the other .dll's that are referenced in the addin.

Is it possible at all, to programmatically get the directory, where the .vsto (and my config file) is located. For example the directory where the VSTO would be deployed to could be: "D:\MyPlugins\PluginX\pluginx.vsto"

I tried various constants / methods that would usually work with a "normal" application, i.e:

Environment.CurrentDirectory
Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()
Assembly.Location / Assembly.CodeBase
System.Windows.Forms.Application.StartupPath

and while most of them work in debug mode when I start the plugin with Visual Studio, obviously none of them work, because when you install a VSTO, your assembly gets copied to some generated directory.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 11 '20 at 17:41

2

CodeBase should always work for the VSTO addins:

    //use CodeBase instead of Location because of Shadow Copy.
    string codebase = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;
    var vUri = new UriBuilder(codebase);
    string vPath = Uri.UnescapeDataString(vUri.Path + vUri.Fragment);
    string directory = Path.GetDirectoryName(vPath);
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(vUri.Host)) directory = @"\\" + vUri.Host + directory;

answered Mar 11 '20 at 17:41

Dmitry Streblechenko

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With this I get something like: "C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\..." Not "D:\MyPlugins\PluginX" – cmos Mar 12 '20 at 07:57
Well, that's where your dll gets deployed by the installer or VS (if you are debugging). – Dmitry Streblechenko Mar 12 '20 at 19:42
Since .Codebase is no longer supported in .NET 6 / core, any idea how to get the path there? – Lumo Jan 18 '22 at 10:37

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 23 '20 at 07:56

So turns out, the path I was looking for is the path to the manifest and it is stored in the registry after the VSTO is run.

The manifest path is stored here: {HKEY_CURRENT_USER/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE}\Software\Microsoft\Office\{Office application name}\Addins\{add-in ID}\Manifest

Find directory of files that are deployed with a VSTO

2 Answers2