Minimum Office Version 2013 vs 2016

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Minimum Office Version 2013 vs 2016
Are changes from 2013 to 2016 significant enough to default to 2013? 
bobcalco




Posts: 66
 Joined: 2019-03-20
In terms of Office integration with my product, I would greatly prefer to support 2016+ if at all possible. One large, interested customer is currently on 2013, though, and I'm wondering if I lose anything important in terms of more recent APIs by targeting 2013 as the least common denominator, or if targeting 2016 would still be fine (after all, EOL deadlines may force them to upgrade soon anyway)?

If I target 2016 interop binaries, will it not work against 2013? If I target 2013, what do I lose from more recent versions?

I guess this gets to how "version neutrality" works in practice with AddIn Express?
Posted 05 Dec, 2021 23:16:51 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Bob,

Using interops of this or that Office version, this is about using early binding and late biding in the source code, not about supporting this or that Office versions. To not support Office 2013, change the minOfficeVersionSupported attribute, see adxloader.dll.manifest: when Office loads your add-in, the loader checks the Office version and compares it with that attribute.

Regards from Poland (CET),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 06 Dec, 2021 04:18:19 Top
bobcalco




Posts: 66
 Joined: 2019-03-20
Sorry, I don't think I expressed my question clearly. It was late. :)

What I'm getting at is, if I target 2016, does that mean I can't support 2013 at all? Vs if I support 2013 as the least common denominator, what 2016 functionality might I lose?

It seems the answer is: 2013 allows me to support 2016, as long as I settle for late binding of those aspects of the Office API that are 2016 specific. If that is a correct interpretation, then the next question would be, what are those aspects of the Office API specific to 2016, for which I'd have to use dynamic binding?
Posted 06 Dec, 2021 09:57:16 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Bob,

Supporting an Office version means specifying the minOfficeVersionSupported attribute. This guarantees that the add-in won't load in any version below the specified version.

And if you specify that your add-in loads in Office 2013, this would mean that to support Office 2016 completely, you would need to use late binding to access any feature introduced in the Office 2016 object model (if you need to support such features). Say, if you only deal with Excel.Range, I suppose you won't do anything at all to support Office 2016.

Regards from Poland (CET),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 06 Dec, 2021 10:37:06 Top
bobcalco




Posts: 66
 Joined: 2019-03-20
Are you aware of what API features in 2016 would require late binding to use? I'd like to quantify it somehow. I guess I can look for "what's new in Office 2016" but I imagine your team has concrete experience of what features matter to add-in developers that can flatten my learning curve on this point.
Posted 06 Dec, 2021 11:08:54 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18829
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Bob,

No, we don't know this by heart. I've found https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/what-s-new-in-excel-2016-7ed67522-a393-dedf-47f7-b7659ff0059e.

Regards from Poland (CET),

Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 07 Dec, 2021 03:45:42 Top