Vista + Office XP - Excel Add-In loads only when Framework 2.0 SDK

[Sanjay Dandekar]

I have developed an Excel Add-In which is expected to run on (Win XP SP2 /
Windows 2003 / Windows Vista) + (Office XP + Office 2003 + Office 2007) - A
total of 9 combination of OS and Office versions. I have developed it in VB
..NET by implementing the Extensibility.IDTExtensibility2 interface. Then I
have created a COM Shim wrapper around it using the wizard. The installer
installs all .NET DLLs in GAC and registers the COM Shim DLL.

I am having a very strange problem in Vista + Office XP environment. In all
other environments it is working without any issue. On Vista + Office XP
environment, when I start Excel - it tries to load the add-in, but for
unknown reason fails to load it. The LoadBehavior value is changed from 3 to
2. However when I install Framework 2.0 SDK on the machine - I do not see
this behavior and the add-in loads without any problem. On other environments
the add-in works without any problem with just Framework 2.0 re-distributable
installed. It also works in Vista + Office 2007 environment.

Any ides what is happening or how do I approach this problem?

- Sanjay

 

[Sanjay Dandekar]

For people who are interested in knowing the solution

Vista + Office XP environment does not have stdole.dll (Office XP PIA) and
hence my add-in was not getting loaded. All other environment has the
stdole.dll installed. The Visual Studio 2005 setup project does not pick up
stdole.dll in "Detected dependency". You have to manually add this DLL to
your setup program.

- Sanjay

 

[RonR]

how do I add stdole.dll manually to a target computer running a VB 2008 XE
app??