VSTO Runtime Assembly Name Changes from Beta 2 to RTM

  • Article

If you created a project for Microsoft Office 2007 using Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, you will probably see a number of broken assembly references if you open the project in the final release of Visual Studio 2008. This is because most of the assemblies in the version of the VSTO runtime that is used for Microsoft Office 2007 projects were changed after Beta 2.

To fix the errors, replace any broken references to assemblies in the first column of the table below with a reference to the corresponding assembly name in the second column.

Beta 2 name

RTM name

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Common.dll

Microsoft.Office.Tools.Common.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Excel.dll

Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Outlook.dll

Microsoft.Office.Tools.Outlook.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Word.dll

Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.dll

Microsoft.Office.Tools.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.AddInBase.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Common.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime.v9.0.dll

(three assemblies from Beta 2 were merged into this one)

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.v9.0.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Runtime.dll

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Runtime.v9.0.dll

For more information about the purpose of each of these assemblies, see “Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime Overview” at https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608603(VS.90).aspx. Also, be sure to check out the podcast "Why a VSTO Runtime" at https://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/archive/2007/07/23/why-a-vsto-runtime.aspx for a brief history of the VSTO runtime and why there are different versions for each release of Microsoft Office.