According to this page it's possible to create an MSI installer to install an office add-in for all users: Deploying your VSTO add-ins to All Users (Saurabh Bhatia). It says what to do but skims on some of the how. I'm trying to create an MSI that creates registry keys under HKLM instead of HKCU. I have a setup project in Visual Studio. Under the registry section, I moved the keys from HKCU to HKLM, but when I run the installer it doesn't seem to create any keys, though there's also no sign of any errors. Is it possible to get visual studio to create keys under HKLM using the GUI or does it have to be coded in a custom action?
Are you on a 32bit or 64bit windows? Odds are you need to look under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\SYSWOW64 to see the 32bit registry keys.
Related
I have found a nice add-in for Word 2013 (VSTO) and I installed it from an admin account, but it doesn't show up in the other local account.
How can I transform the installation for the local user only into installation for all users?
Copy the keys from [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\YourAddinName] to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\AddIns\YourAddinName]
Best practice
Ask this question to the developer
Custom Installer
Try Total Uninstaller or my preferred ESET SysInspector which is free
You will take snapshots of PC before and after installing your addin. Then you compare and get the new created files, new registry entries ... then you convert that for ALL USERS and package that in either Windows Installer (WIX or Installshield) either NSIS or a simple Winform program which will work as an installer.
NOTE. I recommend you to contact the addin developer because he is the only one who know what happen during the installation (perhaps also the antivirus :D)
I have an Outlook 2003 add-in written in Visual Studio 2008. All it does is display a msgbox when it loads. I am using a setup package to create me an msi for install
I have got the security caspol issue sorted. I have the PIA and the VSTO installed on the client. My setup is set to install for all users.
If I install it on a client machine it creates the HKCU registry hive and works perfectly for the installing user and appears in the COM add-ins dialog but doesnt work for any other user that logs in.
I changed the setup package to put the registry hive in HKLM and now it doesn't work for any user, including the installing user and it does not appear in the COM add-ins dialog.
What am I missing? I've read and re-read so much on the net it's starting to drive me crazy.....
Cheers in advance.
Newer versions of office don't read that HKCU key, Instead, they read this weird composite key under HKCU.
Misha Sneerson has a good article (with updates for 2010) here
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mshneer/archive/2007/09/04/deploying-your-vsto-add-in-to-all-users-part-i.aspx
Have you remembered to set the "InstallAllUsers" property in the setup project to true? This is pretty much undocumented, and I have just spent the last three days banging my head against exactly the same problem you describe until I noticed that I had overlooked this. Set it to "true" and now my project installas to all users :)
http://the-simple-programmer.blogspot.com/2011/02/deploy-visual-studio-2008-vsto-add-in.html
I have been accepected into the beta program for the VM Role.
In the email it says that i need to run a registery script to setup visual studio, i did this fine on my pc before i reinstalled it.
However when i go to link i was sent it doesnt work any more?
Does any one have the registery file or know the settings i need to change.
Thanks
You'll find the instructions in this blog post - http://blog.toddysm.com/2011/02/how-to-deploy-windows-azure-vm-role.html.
For convenience, here's the relevant section of the post:
Please read the notification email carefully! In the email you will find information how to enable VM Role features in the Visual Studio development environment. In essence you need to run one of the scripts below to add new registry key or just change the following [dword] registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010\1.0\VirtualMachineRoleEnabled​=1
VM Role Features in VS2010 32-bit Registry Script
VM Role Features in VS2010 64-bit Registry Script
The scripts above will enable the Add New Virtual Machine Role in the context menu in Visual Studio.
I have a problem. I've been installing my VSTO Outlook Add-In to the Outlook 2007 on the account that has no security limitations. For the setup, I am using a normal visual studio setup project. I've had the user install few versions of my application before and it worked fine. Recently, I've created a new version of my application (which is installed to HKLM and to HKCU registry (hotfix that allows me to install the add-in to HKLM registry was also installed)). Now the outlook add-in doesn't even load on the user's computer. If you look in Outlook/Trust Center/Add-ins/ you will see my outlook add-in showing up under "Inactive Application Add-ins", but when I try to enable it, I get a message "This add-in is installed for all users on this computer, and can only be connected or disconnected by an administrator" even though I am logged in as administrator. I also looked in the registry and it has LoadBehaviour as 3, which means that it should appear under active add-ins. I tried installing old version, but now it also doesn't work and does not even appear as installed Outlook add-in.
What can be a cause of this problem?
Thank you
I've spent a week on finding a solution and it was so damn simple... the problem was that I've set identical registry settings to HKCU registry and HKLM registry. As a result the registry settings were in conflict, since both HKCU tried to load this add-in and HKLM tried to load this add-in and as a result it didn't allow Outlook Add-In to load at all. As soon as I've got only the HKCU registry setting, my add-in loaded normally. =D
This also happens if you have the InstallAllUsersVisible flag = FALSE in the UI Interface if using an MSI package. Setting it back to the default TRUE fixed this error for me. I had it working using HKCU - but Victor F nailed the source of the issue.
I am trying to install Visual Studio 2008 at a university's computer lab. The lab machines (XP Pro) are configured so that students don't have Administrator rights when they log in. So when I try to build or debug a class library project in Visual Studio 2008, I get this error: "Cannot register assembly 'C:\Documents and Settings(username)\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\testproj\testproj\bin\Debug\testproj.dll' - access denied. Please make sure you're running the application as administrator. Access to the registry key 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\test.cmdTest' is denied."
In previous versions of Visual Studio, there was the option to add the non-admin account to the Debugger Users and VS Developers groups, and this would enable them to debug and build DLLs. Does Visual Studio 2008 include similar functionality, and would this even be the solution? I'm not seeing the groups added with the installation. If this functionality is not included, is there another way to solve this issue? Allowing students to have Admin rights or Power User rights to the machines is out of the question.
Any suggestions, ideas, or insight would be much appreciated.
Why not just consider using some kind of virtualizations ? Install Visual Studio on a virtual machine, hence, every mess a student gonna make, is gonna be virtual to some extent.
Keep a ready and fresh copy of the image file though.
Probably not the answer you want, but you could start VS by right clicking VS2008/devenv.exe > "run as" and select administrator and have the lab tech enter the admin credentials. This way, VS2008 will have the required rights, but your school isn't giving out a sensitive Login/Password.
Your school should change the group policy to allow you to build your projects. Enlist the help of a friendly professor for that.
Are you doing a web application? I believe that for non-web applications, you do not need admin rights.
If this is not a web application, maybe it's just a file system permissions issue?
From:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165100.aspx
"User permission requirements for Visual Studio vary depending on the operating system and the Visual Studio version. On Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2008 does not require administrator permissions to perform most tasks, but Visual Studio 2005 must run under administrator permissions to perform tasks correctly. On Windows Server 2003 and earlier, members of the Users group can perform most activities in the integrated development environment (IDE)."
It looks like you're trying to register the assembly in COM.
Access to the registry key
'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\test.cmdTest' is
denied."
Are you setting a [assembly:ComVisibleAttribute(true)] attribute in your assemblyinfo.cs or project properties? Try setting this to assembly:ComVisibleAttribute(false).