Question

I am currently working on an Excel 2010 add-in which formerly was an Excel 2007 add-in.
Somewhere in the process of switching computers, the add-in was converted i think.

Some of my customers stated that the add-in wasn’t working on Excel 2007 anymore so I tried to debug it in a VirtualBox with Excel 2007 and Visual Studio 2010 installed.

Now I get the Error Message:

You cannot debug or run this project, because the required version of the Microsft Office application is not installed.

I started a new Excel 2007 add-in project and tried to find what the differences are and came up with the idea that it somewhat has to do with the dll’s so I changed my 2010 addin until it looked like an 2007 addin.

I still get the error message stating that my project can’t be debugged.

Is there anything I could’ve forgotten to change.

Writing a completely new addin is unfortunately not an option.

These questions haven’t helped me so far:

1. Excel Addin that works on Excel 2007 and 2010
2. Deploying Office 2010 addin

Answer 1

To get VS 2010 working with Office 2007 modify the project file (.csproj) so that it will open in Office 2007 and not look for Office 2010 when run (hence the error message above).

Here is the project settings change (Excel example):

Source XPath:

//Project/ProjectExtensions/VisualStudio/FlavorProperties/ProjectProperties/@DebugInfoExeName

Old Value (Office 2010):

DebugInfoExeName=”#Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\InstallRoot\Path#excel.exe”

New Value (Office 2007):

DebugInfoExeName=”#Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\InstallRoot
\Path#excel.exe”

After changing this project setting, when you fire up the debugger (F5) it will load the Excel 2007 application instead of looking for Excel 2010.