How to properly remove an Office/Outlook add-in coded with VSTO?

Question

I'm trying to write a WiX MSI installer for my Outlook add-in, that is written using Visual Studio and VSTO.

I can see that my MSI can successfully remove the following registry key upon uninstallation from Control Panel:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\AddIns\{add-in-name}

and can also remove the add-in files from the ProgramFiles folder.

But when I then start up Outlook, the menu item from the add-in is still there, but being totally empty:

So how do I remove that menu item as well?

Answer 1

You need to add a custom action where you can remove your command bars' customizations. Read more about that on the following pages:

• Adding a Custom Action
• How to create custom actions in c# and bind it on a wix setup project

Basically, in the custom action, you need to automate Outlook and remove your command bar controls programmatically.