Develop for Microsoft Office 2013 using Microsoft Office 2016 - office-interop

Is it possible to install assemblies or tools for Microsoft Office 2013 on development machine that has Microsoft Office 2016?
Or for example can i target/develop for multiple versions of Microsoft Office on a development PC that has Microsoft Office 2016?


You can support lower Office versions out of the box. Solutions that were created by using Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2013 or Visual Studio 2010 can run in Office 2013, Office 2010, or the 2007 Microsoft Office system. However, the solution can use only those features and APIs that are available in all three versions of Office. See Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office for more information.

Related

Missing Outlook 2013 Add-in

I am working on making a Outlook Add-in for Outlook 2013. The issue is, I use Visual Studio 2010. I did some googling and found that I need the Developer Tool Kit and it lead me here. I installed the tool kit, but I am still not seeing any new Templates. What am I doing wrong, or what can I do to get that Outlook Add-in?
Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately VSTO allows creating version-specific add-ins. VSTO 2010 (Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime) is shipped with Visual Studio 2010 Professional edition or above. It supports creation and editing of document- and application-level add-ins for Office 2007 and Office 2010. You need to use later Visual Studio versions for creating COM add-ins for Office 2013. However, you can run solutions in Office 2013 that were created in earlier Visual Studio versions, see Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office for more information.

Office 2016 add-in development in Visual studio 2013

We need to develop add-in for the Office 2016. We are using the Visual studio 2013. It is only showing the Office 2013 add-in templates. Is it possible to create Office 2016 add-in from Visual studio 2013? If so, kindly let me know the steps.

You need VS 2015 to get the specific templates for Office 2016. VSTO only ever provides templates for "current" versions of Office.
If Office 2013 is installed you can develop an Add-in for it. There should be no problem installing and running it in Office 2016 - unless you want to use technology specific to 2016. In that case, you could use late-binding (PInvoke) for the 2016-specific portions, but debugging/testing would be a bit of a pain.
You can download the free Visual Studio 2015 Community edition (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs.aspx) as well as the VSTO package (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/office-tools-vs.aspx): VSTO does integrate into the Community edition for version 2015 (and 2013, for that matter). Licensing restrictions would apply, of course.
Other than that, you'd need to upgrade to a full VS 2015.

You can develop and run Office 2016 addins in VS2013. No need to upgrade to VS2015.
Install VSTO 4.0 extension for VS2013
Create Office 2013 plugin using Visual Studio template
Open project file and replace office version string "15.0" to "16.0" in ProjectExtensions section. Look for this of similar string to edit:
OfficeVersion="15.0" VstxVersion="4.0" ApplicationType="Outlook" Language="cs" TemplatesPath="" DebugInfoExeName="#Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\InstallRoot\Path#outlook.exe"

Yes, it is possible. The add-in created in Visual Studio 2013 can be run in Office 2016. You can read more about that in the Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office article.
In case if you need to use new methods and properties available only in Office 2016 you can use the Reflection mechanism (see Type.InvokeMember).

there is an example for Outlook, i tried it for Excel and it works as well.
my example:
<ProjectProperties HostName="Excel" HostPackage="{29A7B9D7-A7F1-4328-8EF0-6B2D1A56B2C1}" OfficeVersion="16.0" VstxVersion="4.0" ApplicationType="Excel" Language="vb" TemplatesPath="" DebugInfoExeName="#Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\InstallRoot\Path#excel.exe" DebugInfoCommandLine="/x" AddItemTemplatesGuid="{DCFE8D25-4715-4C33-9EAB-A34A9EBC9544}" />
i changed
OfficeVersion="15.0"
to
OfficeVersion="16.0"
and the path to Excel
#Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\
as well, finally it starts in Excel 2016...

Developing Excel 2007 Document-Level Solution in Visual Studio 2013

The Visual Studio 2013 documentation does not list Excel 2007 as one of the versions supported in the document-level customization solutions.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa942839.aspx
If I go the route of a document-level customization solution I will need it to be able to be deployed to Excel 2007 because that is the version of Office the users will have.
Do I need to develop in an earlier version of Visual Studio to get this to work? - or can I develop Excel 2007 document solutions in Visual Studio 2013? If so, will I need office 2007 installed on my development machine?
A similar question has been asked regarding Visual Studio 2012 below:
VSTO 2012: backward compatibility
Thanks!

Visual Studio 2010 and Office 2003 PIA: is that possible?

I'm about to start porting a bunch of .NET apps to Visual Studio 2010 as some .NET 4 features are required in the apps. The resulting apps need to be able to call Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010 interop assemblies.
What is a good way to setup a develop environment that supports this?

Microsoft Outlook Addon

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System can only be installed on a machine with the corresponding Visual Studio localized edition. Please install the matching Visual Studio 2005 localized edition and then run Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System setup again.

This may be of interest: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vssetup/thread/a3fecb4c-084c-4901-a694-b1ab75863414

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