.NET add-in - Word 2000, XP, and 2003

[David Thielen]

Hi;

As I understand it, this is the situation for writing .NET add-ins.

1) Microsoft has no PIAs for Office 2000.

2) Microsoft provides PIAs for Office XP (2002). But they do not ship with
Office itself.

3) Office 2003 includes PIAs in it's install, but they are only installable
if .NET was installed before Office was installed.

4) Microsoft says you must build a separate version of your add-in for each
version of Office. In other words, building a version that uses the Office
2002 PIAs should not be run on Office 2003.

This leads to the following questions:

Q1) To use Office 2000, I must build my own PIAs. However, another add-in
that also is built for Office 2000 would build it's own PIAs. Won't this lead
to problems even if neither are placed in the GAC and both are strongly
signed as they will be accessing the same COM object?

Q2) When installing the Office 2002 PIAs, should they be installed in the GAC?

Q3) If a user installed .NET after installing Office 2003, how do I test for
the fact that they don't have the PIAs installed? And what should I tell them
to do?

Q4) Do I really need to do a separate build for Word 2002 and Word 2003? Or
will Word 2003 work fine with an add-in built for Word 2002?

Q5) Will an add-in built for Word 2002 and using the Word 2002 PIAs run on
Word 2000 - assuming it doesn't make use of any methods that are Word 2002
only?

Q6) When Word 2004 (or 2005) comes out, will my Word 2003 add-in work on it?
Or will I need to build a new one then?

thanks - dave

 

[Peter Huang]

Hi

Comments in line.


Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--------------------

Thread-Topic: .NET add-in - Word 2000, XP, and 2003
thread-index: AcTAPkk+0WRW/6nHQNmq2FKuMJdEQA==
X-WBNR-Posting-Host: 199.45.247.98
From: "=?Utf-8?B?RGF2aWQgVGhpZWxlbg==?=" <[email protected]>
Subject: .NET add-in - Word 2000, XP, and 2003
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 10:12:02 -0800
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Newsreader: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
Importance: normal
Priority: normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.0
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.office.developer.com.add_ins
NNTP-Posting-Host: TK2MSFTNGXA03.phx.gbl 10.40.1.29
Path: cpmsftngxa10.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGXA03.phx.gbl
Xref: cpmsftngxa10.phx.gbl microsoft.public.office.developer.com.add_ins:7045
X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.office.developer.com.add_ins

Hi;

As I understand it, this is the situation for writing .NET add-ins.

1) Microsoft has no PIAs for Office 2000.

2) Microsoft provides PIAs for Office XP (2002). But they do not ship with
Office itself.

3) Office 2003 includes PIAs in it's install, but they are only installable
if .NET was installed before Office was installed.

4) Microsoft says you must build a separate version of your add-in for each
version of Office. In other words, building a version that uses the Office
2002 PIAs should not be run on Office 2003.

This leads to the following questions:

Q1) To use Office 2000, I must build my own PIAs. However, another add-in
that also is built for Office 2000 would build it's own PIAs. Won't this lead
to problems even if neither are placed in the GAC and both are strongly
signed as they will be accessing the same COM object?

I think as we do with office xp and 2003 PIA, when we deploy our office
solution application we do need to ensure that the end-user has installed
office xp /2003 PIA. So we can make sure our app is working on the same
version PIA. For office 2000, when you deploy your application, you also
need to deploy your PIA too.

Q2) When installing the Office 2002 PIAs, should they be installed in the GAC?

Yes, since PIA is strongnamed, we recommend to install it in the GAC.
Actually when you run the bat file shipped with the office 2002 PIA, it
will be installed in the GAC.

Q3) If a user installed .NET after installing Office 2003, how do I test for
the fact that they don't have the PIAs installed? And what should I tell them
to do?

I think they can check the GAC to see if the PIA is installed. Aslo they
can repair install the office 2003 and added install the PIA component.

Q4) Do I really need to do a separate build for Word 2002 and Word 2003? Or
will Word 2003 work fine with an add-in built for Word 2002?

Yes, because office xp PIA is not compatible with office 2003 PIA, that is
why we provide two versions of PIA for office xp and 2003.

Q5) Will an add-in built for Word 2002 and using the Word 2002 PIAs run on
Word 2000 - assuming it doesn't make use of any methods that are Word 2002
only?

No, we can not , because the addin will try to locate the 2002 PIA in the
GAC(based on the full path name, e.g. version, name, public key ...), and
it will find nothing then the program can not work.

Q6) When Word 2004 (or 2005) comes out, will my Word 2003 add-in work on it?
Or will I need to build a new one then?

So far we can not make sure what it will be in the furture, because the
product is being developped, we can not guarantee if anything will change
when the product release finally. Anyway I think we are trying to improve
our product. If you still have any concern, please feel free to post here.

 

[Peter Huang]

Hi,

If you have any more concerns on it, please feel free to post here.


Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[David Thielen]

Hi;

Sorry - I marked that your previous post was an answer - but I've found that
you have to do that 2 or 3 times for it to take and I didn't click it enough
on this one.

thanks - dave

 

[Eugene E. Starostin]

Hi David,

I like your questions. Reading your messages turned out to be amusing.
And your questions give my more undestanding COM add-ins on .NET.

Now I'll try to provide our expirence.

We have tried to generate Office 2000 PIAs. There are some problems.
But we have made some changes within its soource code and rebuilt PIAs
successfully. Generally it works.

It works for Office 2000 and higher. We have tested a sample add-in
on Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002 and 2003. It works on these versions.
It works with one Office 2000 PIAs.

This is the result of our experiment. We are planning to add support MS
PIAs to our product. But there are more things to think about. And it seems
to require a lot of testing.

I think MS guys are right when advise us to use different PIAs separately
for different Office versions. But it doesn't seem necessary if we use
the Office 2003 features that are also provided by Office 2000 and 2002.

As for Q1. I think the PIAs in the GAC will be shared for both add-ins.

Q2. Subject of your choice.

Q3. No comments now. We are studying this problem for our product.
Does MS PIAs EULA allow us to deliver PIAs with add-ins?

Q4. I think there is the top-down compatibility. PIAs is just a wrapper over
COM objects, but it is not these objects. Office 2003 PIAs seems to be used
with
an Office 2002 add-in if you do not use Office 2003 features directly. In
any case
you can determine Office versions and then call version specific methods and
properties.

Q5. Hmm... When can I find details about the next Word?

I think we will get more results next week or two when we prepare the next
version
of our ADX.

Regards from Belorussia
Eugene Starostin

 

[David Thielen]

Hi;

We're doing the opposate of you for now.

1) We are not supporting Word 2000 (yet).

2) We are building separately for Word 2002 and Word 2003.

3) We are installing the Word 2002 PIAs in the GAC.

4) We are looking for Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll as a launch
condition and telling them to reinstall Office if it is not there. (If we can
get the ok, we will ship with the PIAs and place them in the GAC.)

Good luck to you. We will try creating the Word 2000 PIAs after we get
everything else working right. They definitely don't make this easy do they?

thanks - dave

 

[Jeremy Lukins]

I have been working with Office XP PIAs and I am preparing a demo for some
fellow developers and have two questions.

Firstly, do you have some links with the information from Microsoft you are
quoting regarding different versions of Office and installation tips.

Secondly, do you know if the next version of Office will do away with the
need for COM Interop and do you have a link for that too?

Many thanks.

 

[Jeremy Lukins]

I have been working with Office XP PIAs and I am preparing a demo for some
fellow developers and have two questions.

Firstly, do you have some links with the information from Microsoft you are
quoting regarding different versions of Office and installation tips.

Secondly, do you know if the next version of Office will do away with the
need for COM Interop and do you have a link for that too?

Many thanks.