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I have developed a basic add in and set it up using Install shield installer. I register entries into HKLM hive both for 32 and 64 bit.

Now when i run the setup file and start the outlook 2013 in my local machine. Add in is showed in outlook. Same add in is not working with outlook 2010 which is in a vm. In this case registry entires are recorded. VSTO_SUPPRESSDISPLAYALERTS is also not popping up any messages.

Same add in is getting loaded when I run it as a vsto which works for HKCU but the setup file is not loading the add in.

Any other things which I can do ?

Philip Kirkbride
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saurav
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  • Are you sure your add-in is not simply deactivated by Outlook? Here is what I wrote for my end-users on how to reactivate a disabled add-in (KMailAssistant in my case) https://keluro.com/software/kmailassistant/help-v1/#activate – Benoit Patra Jan 08 '16 at 11:36
  • @BenoitPatra thanks for the reply....i have checked that the add in is not present in the inactive or in the disabled list... – saurav Jan 08 '16 at 11:40

2 Answers2

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There are a lot of things that may prevent the add-in from loading:

  1. You didn't include all the required prerequsites to the add-in installer.

  2. I'd recommend checking the COM add-ins list in Outlook. Is your add-in listed there?

Microsoft Office applications can disable VSTO Add-ins that behave unexpectedly. If an application does not load your VSTO Add-in, the application might have hard disabled or soft disabled your VSTO Add-in.

Hard disabling can occur when an VSTO Add-in causes the application to close unexpectedly. It might also occur on your development computer if you stop the debugger while the Startup event handler in your VSTO Add-in is executing.

Soft disabling can occur when a VSTO Add-in produces an error that does not cause the application to unexpectedly close. For example, an application might soft disable a VSTO Add-in if it throws an unhandled exception while the Startup event handler is executing.

When you re-enable a soft-disabled VSTO Add-in, the application immediately attempts to load the VSTO Add-in. If the problem that initially caused the application to soft disable the VSTO Add-in has not been fixed, the application will soft disable the VSTO Add-in again. Read more about that in the How to: Re-enable a VSTO Add-in That Has Been Disabled article.

  1. Do you get any UI errors?

By default, if an VSTO Add-in attempts to manipulate the Microsoft Office user interface (UI) and fails, no error message is displayed. However, you can configure Microsoft Office applications to display messages for errors that relate to the UI. You can use these messages to help determine why a custom Ribbon does not appear, or why a Ribbon appears but no controls appear. See How to: Show Add-in User Interface Errors for more information.

Eugene Astafiev
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  • thanks a lot Eugene ...i have solved my problem...it was due to the incorrect load behaviour registry chosen by me during the install shield setup creation – saurav Jan 09 '16 at 12:58
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Kind of silly mistake i did.

During install shield setup creation. For the registry entry of "LoadBehaviour" i made it as a string value instead of DWORD value. Correcting that made it work.

Strange thing is that InstallShield installer does not report an error or warning in the logs if the registry value types are incorrect.

cheers,

Saurav

saurav
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