Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

re: Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

Eric Carter — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:34:23 GMT

Marc--use the email link above and contact me directly and I'll see if I can help.

Deployment

Marc Enzler — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:11:02 GMT

Dear Eric,

Thanks a lot for this sample code. I have already wasted days on the topic. However, while this runs well on the development machine I have failed to deploy it. I tried your general instructions but to no avail. I am more than willing to buy your book to see how you do that, however it seems it has not yet been published.

I am in desperate need to get this working. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Best,

Marc

re: Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

Eric Carter — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:22:19 GMT

Sam--my books go into how to deploy these (see chapter 3) but to quickly sketch it out, you add a new setup and deployment project to your solution, then right click the newly added project and choose Project Output from the Add menu. In the dialog box that occurs make sure that your AutomationAddin project is set as the Primary output then click OK. Finally, make sure that when you click on the AutomationAddin node in the setup project and view the properties that Register is set to vsdrpCOM.

re: Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

Eric Carter — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:18:12 GMT

Johan--I haven't completely looked into this but I know in general how it works so maybe you can do the legwork to figure it out once I give you a few pointers.

These extra things like description and help id are store in the typelibrary generated by regasm.exe when your class is registered for COM interop.

There are two avenues to pursue. First you may be able to build a custom type library and plug in the description and help id yourself. You can see the type library that regasm.exe generates by using the /tlb option and specifying a type library name. You may have to decompile the typelibrary back to idl (use oleview) then modify the idl and recompile to a typelibrary and reregister the type library.

Another possibility is that there is some .NET attribute you can put on your method that regasm will pick up (when it runs tlbexp).

re: Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

Sam — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:21:04 GMT

Hi Eric, I am new to programming and .net. Your instructions were terrific. I created the addin and was able to test on my computer. How do i deploy this to another excel user?

re: Updated Instructions for Writing User Defined Functions for Excel in .NET

Johan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:02:51 GMT

Hi Eric,

this is just what i needed. I have an old Vb6 com library and corresponding XLA file to add some special calculations to excel and i was already some time looking to update all this to .NET. Your method works fine, however, i am missing some functionality (lack of knowledge probable) to do a full upgrade:

in the xla file (VBA) i could add some attributes to tell Excel a description of my function and where to find the help file is there something corresponding in .NET? (Attribute Funcxyz.VB_Description = "Funcxyz calculates Efficiency in [%]"

Attribute Funcxyz.VB_HelpID = 110)

How can i make errors appear in Excel like #N/A or #Value etc..., even a division by 0 generated by a function returning a double results in a very large number returned, but no error ...

Thanks in advance,

Johan.

.NET4Office : Writing user defined functions for Excel in .NET

.NET4Office : Writing user defined functions for Excel in .NET — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:10:45 GMT

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