Deploying Office add-in / plud-in in VSTO
MSI deployment in C#, VB.NET

Add-in Express™
for Microsoft® Office and VSTO

Add-in Express Home > Add-in Express for Office and VSTO > Online Guide > Deploying Office VSTO solutions

Deployment of Office VSTO add-ins

Add-in Express simplifies creating and debugging MSI-based setup projects for VSTO add-ins and provides a ClickOnce deployment model of its own.

MSI deployment

When deploying VSTO-based solutions, you have to follow Microsoft recommendations. Add-in Express makes easier for you to follow some of them. Starting from version 3.5, Add-in Express provides additional features simplifying VSTO projects deployment. First, when you add a new AddinModule to the project, Add-in Express automatically adds ready-to-use custom actions to the setup project. The actions are provided by a special .NET assembly called Add-in Registrator (adxregaddin.exe). It is located in the Redistributables folder of Add-in Express setup folder.

VSTO solutions deployment

  • Install

/install="[TARGETDIR]\MyVstoAddin1.manifest" /displayerrors=1

  • Rollback

/uninstall="[TARGETDIR]\MyVstoAddin1.manifest"

  • Uninstall

/uninstall="[TARGETDIR]\MyVstoAddin1.manifest"

When you add-in is installed, the Add-in Registrator creates the following code group: User / Code groups / All code / , and grants it the "Full Trust" permission. You can find the group in Control Panel / Administrative Tools / .NET Framework 2.0 configuration.

Secondly, Add-in Express specifies the following command line in the PostBuildEvent property of the setup project:

%AddinExpressInstallFodler%\Bin\DisableUAC.exe %BuiltOuputPath% /UAC=Off

If you set the /UAC parameter to On, the setup will require administrative privileges to be asked, when run by a non-admin user on Vista. In addition, DisableUAC.exe disables the "Everyone / Just Me" choice in the setup UI and targets the DefaultLocation property of the setup project to [AppDataFolder] instead of [ProgramFilesFolder].

See also ClickOnce solutions for Office add-ins

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    See Also