.NET app.config question

Question

I have created an Excel 2003 add-in that uses the CLR 2.0 and this add-in is to be installed in hundreds of machines at my customer\'s site. The issue is that some of the ma

Answer 1

What is the error message that you receive?

The problem that you describe should not occur with Office 2007. However, it is a known problem for so-called Shared Add-ins (.NET add-ins based on the Extensibility.IDTExtensibility2 interface using COM interoperability) in Office 2003.

Microsoft has a released a patch, which should be installed for every user using the add-in. You can obtain the patch here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908002

The solution using the config file is a non-standard solution but should also fix the problem as stated in the following article:

http://nielsvanvliet.com/excel.html#Patch

If want to deploy your add-in using an MSI installer you should check the Shared Add-in Support Update for the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (KB908002) as a pre-requisite in the properties of the setup project. Please note that this fix can only be installed for the current user, i.e. an ALLUSERS setup should be disabled.

UPDATE: The installation with VS 2008 is a little more complicated. See here:

Can a .NET Word 2003 add-in be installed outside of the GAC?

Answer 2

Well, if there are hundreds of machines I assume there is Group Policy in place or some other method of running admin scripts or setup files. Maybe you can create a small MSI package to push out this config file or get it added to a startup script?