VSTO Setup Projects in Visual Studio

[Jen53403]

Hi, I'm new to VSTO and Visual Studio. I want to make changes to an existing project written by someone else, then deploy it for installation on other machines. The project is an Excel add-in, originally written in VSTO 2005, and I'm modifying it in the same version of VSTO in Visual Studio 2005.

If I open the .vbproj file from the original project, Visual Studio brings up all files in the project for me. I found out I also need a setup project if I want to compile this thing for deployment. So I created a solution, added the original project to it, and added a setup project. But the setup project is empty - it doesn't have any dependencies listed under it, and it didn't make any entries in the registry editor window for the project.

Exactly what do I do in Visual Studio to get this setup project to realize it's supposed to work with the VSTO project I'm modifying?

 

[imported_Dhaval00]

If the Setup project is in the same solution, you need to point it to the main project. Follow this article for a quick, dirty hint: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307353

NOTE: If you already have an application project in your solution, you can add the project outputs by selecting Project Outputs instead of File.

 

[Jen53403]

I had actually read that page before. I right clicked and added the project output > primary output to the setup project. Now my problem is that the previous version of this add-in had been under a different name, so i can't just use the same installation script and everything now that the file names and locations are different. Does this mean users will have to uninstall the previous version of the add-in before installing this one, since the computer will think it's a different add-in?

I have one other question: What's an xla file for? Why did the previous version create one on my PC when I installed it, but my version doesn't? Is that something that can be specified in Visual Studio also?

 

[imported_Dhaval00]

MSI's depend primarily on GUIDs (if you don't know GUIDs, Google them). Since you don't have the older project, and you added a new (S&D) project from scratch, VS will assign this MSI a new GUID. Universally, on the production system, this GUID is used by Windows to track dependecies, components, etc. In any case, even if you had the older project, it would very much depend on the original programmer if he/she put in proper "UpgradeCode" (this ia property used internally by MSIs for perfomring upgrades).

So yes, your end-users will need to uninstall the previous version before executing your MSI - if they run your MSI directly, they may end up having conflicts on the system.

I believe .xla files are the actual Excel add-ins you're trying to install. Never used/programmed them before, so no clue about them.