VSTO Development and Deployment Requirements

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Steven Mackenzie - 05 Mar 2007 18:14 GMT

Hello,

Can anyone tell me if there are any restrictions on the versions of Office
required to develop solutions using VSTO?

If a developer has VS 2005 Pro, what extras need to be purchased to develop for
Office 2003?

I've read that I need an Office Professional or better version of office to use
VSTO, but can't find a link regarding that now.

Also, can I deploy solutions to any Office 2003 version, or does the host need
to be Pro or above too?

Similarly for 2007 - do I need a pro version to develop for that? And for the host?

Does the office suite include the runtime support, or does that need to be
deployed with my application?

Thanks,
Steven

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Harry Miller [MSFT] - 07 Mar 2007 19:10 GMT

Yes, you need Office 2003 Professional to develop customizations, and each
end user also needs Office 2003 Professional installed. All the versions are
listed here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/54ds2za4(VS.80).aspx

If you just have VS 2005 Pro, you also need to purchase Visual Studio 2005
Tools for Office, which is a version of Visual Studio:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718673.aspx

For Office 2007, you can download and install a free add-on to VS--you don't
need Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office to be able to use it. It's called
VSTO 2005 SE (second edition), but it does not work for Office 2003, and it
does not include document-level customizations:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905543.aspx

VSTO 2005 SE works with any version of Office 2007.

The runtime is a separate installation that you'll need to include in your
Setup package; it is not included with Office:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f5539a90-dc41-4792-8ef8
-f4de62ff1e81&DisplayLang=en

Signature

Harry Miller
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

> Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> Thanks,
> Steven

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Alec MacLean - 08 Mar 2007 13:43 GMT

> Yes, you need Office 2003 Professional to develop customizations,

I can understand this requirement be made for the developer in order for the
VSTO install to operate properly...

> and each end user also needs Office 2003 Professional installed.

...But really? So we can't use VSTO to develop a solution for Word or Excel
for users that only have Office 2003 Standard?

That seems very short-sighted and restrictive, not to mention cost
inhibitive for smaller companies that don't need (or want) Access, etc.

Al

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Steven Mackenzie - 08 Mar 2007 15:18 GMT

Thank you very much Harry

Can you confirm that for Office 2007 targets I could, for example, use the
Standard Edition to both develop and host my add-ins?

I think that will be the reason for my customer to upgrade to Office 2007!

Steven

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Harry Miller [MSFT] - 30 Mar 2007 16:59 GMT

Yes, Office 2007 Standard and above have been designed to run VSTO
solutions, so that's a good reason to upgrade.
BUT:
If you create document-level customizations for Office 2003 using VSTO 2005,
they will run in Office 2007 only if you install the newer VSTO 2005 SE
runtime on the end user computers.

You cannot create document-level customizations specifically for Office 2007
until the next release of Visual Studio, which means you can't use new stuff
like the Ribbon and custom task panes for Word and Excel document-level
customizations.

BUT, you CAN work with the Office 2007 features in application-level add-ins
that you create using VSTO 2005 SE.

Signature

Harry Miller
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

> Thank you very much Harry
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> Steven

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VSTO Development and Deployment Requirements

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