Error deploying VSTO Office addin

Question

I'm having some issues deploying a Visio addin. Running the VSTO file works on my computer, but whenever I try and move it to any other user's computer it throws an error on deployment. I thought it might be a setting I'd set in the project properties so I created an entirely new plugin project and set it to display a message box on startup. The error I'm getting is:

An error occured during customization install.
The expected element "addIn" was not found in the XML.

Remscheid

Answer 1

This is caused by an issue with Clickonce. I found a workaround by installing the addin using MSI. This Guide was a lot of help.

Taken from the section about registry settings for the msi installation:

It is important to note the ‘|vstolocal’ value appended to the end of the Manifest value. This informs the VSTO runtime that it is locally installed and to not invoke the ClickOnce installer.

Remscheid

Answer 2

I'm having the same issue with our Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint add-in. The installation of the msi runs perfect. When starting Word for example, the Add-in itself gets 'installed' and then I receive the error. I have added |vstolocal to the registry, which is located in the HKCU tree.

The projects is a Visual Studio 2010 project, build on TFS 2008. The installation on an Office 2010 goes well, the error only occurs when Office 2007 is on the machine.

Anything else I'm overseeing?

Descend

Found the solution. Seems that I need to install Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime. That fixed the issue. – Descend

Thanks Joeri. It worked. But, is there a way to not install the Runtime? I mean, can we just add a .dll to our project or something like that? – Grapevine

Joeri: Thanks, your comment should be the accepted solution! Added VS 2010 Tools for Office Runtime to the Prerequisites (in the Publish section of the project properties). Then it worked fine. Jeff: Adding it as prerequisite should eliminate users' need to do a separate download/install. – Holierthanthou

We encounterred the same error. Installed VSTOR 2010, and the problem went away. – Severable

Answer 3

The solution to my experience with this issue was the one given by Joeri on the 8th July - install Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime on the target machine.

Halsy

his problem and the one in the question are different – Remscheid

Yes, I guess I was in a similar boat to the one s/he was in - i.e. I was looking for a solution to a problem and the search engines gave this post as a possibility. The problem that you were having was not exactly the same, but the solution that Joeri suggested was what helped me solve my problem, so I just wanted to acknowledge that as a useful suggestion in case anyone else like me (and Joeri) came along with a simliar problem with the same solution - i.e. the need to deploy the VS 2010 Tools for Office Runtime. – Halsy

Answer 4

This is an issue with the version of Visio your add-in targets versus what is installed on the client machine. AddIn is an element that is new with the 2007 versions of Office. More than likely the client is running Visio 2003.

Monticule

that was not the case. We do not have visio 2003 on our systems – Remscheid

the part to focus on is not the version it could potentially have happened with 03 or 07, the invalidmanifestexception means the problem is with a manifest file, most likely the app.vsto. In this case it was config of the msi. – Kissel

Answer 5

Some times the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime is installed on the machine but the vsto file fails to find it. In this case try if you can manually execute the installation command line.See example below (replace X with your own drive letter, path, and file name):

"c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VSTO\10.0\VSTOInstaller.exe" /Install file:///X:/XXX/XXX.vsto 

Massorete