I created an Office Add-In using the Yeoman generator, I chose the React add-in and I was able to make it run properly within VS Code by following this tutorial: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/tutorials/excel-tutorial
The react boilerplate includes a piece of code which logs an action to the console, but I see no console anywhere. According to the documentation, since my version of Office is 2016 volume licensed, I'm running Internet Explorer, and since my Windows system is 8.1, I can't use the F12 tools nor the Microsoft Office Add-In Debugger, so how do I view these logs like I do when I develop web applications for other browsers like Chrome and Firefox?
I followed the instructions in this guide by microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/testing/debug-add-ins-using-f12-tools-ie
Now, for what I understood, the only option I'm left with is to "Switch to the Internet Explorer 11 webview". So I ran the command npx office-addin-dev-settings webview manifest.xml ie
in the terminal and it returned "The web view type is set to Microsoft Internet Explorer". Then when I go ahead and type npm start
, the add-in loads correctly but I still can't see any dev tools.
I did try something else by going to the Run and Debug tab in VS Code, choosing the option "Excel Desktop (Edge-Legacy)", running the command npx office-addin-dev-settings webview manifest.xml edge-legacy
, modifying the launch.json file so it didn't complain but I saw no difference.
I was able to have bridge chrome and edge devtools using the IEDiagnosticsAdapter, but nothing appears in the console, so I think it's unsupported.