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Signing your Office solutions with a certificate is a mandatory step, but there are several optional steps that can change the way the certificate is presented to the end user or customer. This example uses a Visual Studio generated test certificate, but the dialog box is similar to what you would see...

You have probably been reading and hearing about Microsoft Office 2010 for some months. Now, you may be wondering how much work is necessary to install your existing Office 2007/VSTO 3.0 solutions on customer computers that have Office 2010. Perhaps you’re thinking about migrating the Windows Installer...

Aaron wrote a great article about the VSTO runtime components earlier, which explained the Office extensions for .NET Framework 3.5 and Office extensions for .NET Framework 4. He also explained that starting in Microsoft Office 2010, the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office runtime is included and does...

Storing settings in the config File The app.config file is used for many purposes and one of common uses is for storing application settings like connection strings. For example, you can store a string to the web service reference used by your application in the app.config file. The idea behind...

I have previously posted how you can specify various properties for a VSTO solution like the Publisher and Product Names by tweaking a few files in Visual Studio 2008. With Visual Studio 2010 ( Beta 2 ) you can edit these properties directly through the Publish Page. All Office projects in Visual Studio...

Starting in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you can perform additional tasks after an Office solution is installed known as a post-deployment action. For example, you can copy a customized Office document and create registry keys on the end user computer. You can compare these to Windows Installer custom...

Starting in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you can deploy multiple Office solutions in a single ClickOnce installer. For example, you can develop two Office solutions (one for Outlook and another for Excel) and combine these into a single installer with a single entry in the Add/Remove Programs list in Windows...

Many customers have reported issues with installing a VSTO project that has been published with Visual Studio 2008 running on the recently released Windows 7 Release Candidate. If you published your solution using VS2008 on a machine running the Windows 7 RC and then you try to install the solution...

ClickOnce manifest signing can be a little confusing for someone going through the process the very first time. This is probably because it involves signing multiple files in a particular sequence. Once you understand the process conceptually it becomes fairly easy to follow. In this post, I hope to...

I just posted another interview on Channel 9 . I sit down again with Saurabh Bhatia, a Program Manager on the Office Client team, who is responsible for the ClickOnce publishing functionality in Visual Studio. We chat about trust issues and certificates and he sets me straight on how ClickOnce deployment...

In an attempt to make this easier to read here are a few terms I will be using frequently in this article: VSTOR = Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System (version 3.0 Runtime) (x86) VSTORSP1 = Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System (version 3.0 Runtime) Service Pack...

After you develop Office solutions with Visual Studio Tools for Office, you can use Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to simplify your deployment experience. First, you can take advantage of the smaller .NET Framework Client Profile to decrease download time. Next, the Office 2007 primary interop assemblies (PIAs...

The other day I was asked about the automatic Updates feature of VSTO 3.0 deployment. In this scenario, he used the Publish Wizard in VS 2008 to create a Word document solution and the install manifest. Then a bunch of people used the Word document, and kicked off the installer which then copied things...

Recently in the Visual Studio Tools for Office forum , a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 developer asked how to include the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 in the same directory as the application.  For example, you can select Download prerequisites from the same location as my application in the Prerequisites...

Updated August, 2008 I'd like to give you some insight into how we decide what goes into a Service Pack for Microsoft Visual Studio. I'm speaking specifically about how the VSTO team built SP1; most other groups within Visual Studio use the same process. We take a few different approaches including:...

Many customers have requested how to specify options like a Product or Publisher Name for Office 2007 VSTO solutions deployed from Visual Studio 2008. However, you cannot specify these properties in the Visual Studio IDE. In this post, I will describe the various other options you have to specify these...

You can now read the long awaited whitepapers about deploying Office 2007 solutions with a Visual Studio 2008 Setup project to create a Windows Installer package. These whitepapers show you how to complete the following tasks: Configure prerequisites: .NET Framework 3.5, the VSTO 3.0 runtime, and...

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is not finished yet, but we do have a beta version of the documentation ready for you to read! You can learn about some of the features that you'll see later this year when we release SP1. I recommend starting with reading about a totally new feature that we put into...

When you use ClickOnce in Visual Studio 2008 to deploy your Office solution, you can include prerequisites such as the .NET Framework 3.5, the Visual Studio Tools for Office system 3.0 Runtime, and Windows Installer 3.1. However, the primary interop assemblies (PIAs) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system...

Have you used the new ClickOnce Publish and Deployment feature in Visual Studio 2008 for Office 2007 solutions ? If so, we need your feedback now - and we need it before May 8th (which is an internal deadline for our team)! We're working on Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and would like to know...

A lot of VBA developers tell me that they love VBA solutions because there is no deployment necessary. All the code lives inside the document itself, so all you need to do is get the document (in e-mail or on SharePoint) and you have everything you need to get the job done. Then there are some really...

When you deploy your VSTO solution, you must package the following prerequisites for your end users: .NET Framework, the VSTO runtime, and the Microsoft Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs). Visual Studio Tools for Office in Visual Studio 2008 offers a ClickOnce experience only for the 2007 Microsoft...

Last Monday I presented session CLI202: Developing and Deploying Smart Clients for Office at the Office Developer Conference in San Jose. This blog post is a mini-version of the slides and demos from my session. The session was not recorded. Slide 1: Office Development In VS 2008 You can develop...