Deploying Office plug-ins in Visual Studio .NET
using the ClickOnce deployment technology

Deploying your Office solutions based on Add-in Express

By default, Add-in Express includes setup projects in your Office solutions automatically. To simplify common tasks such as registering and unregistering your project output, several ready-to-use custom actions are automatically added to the setup project. These custom actions create all necessary registry keys for you. Add-in Express creates projects that work on Windows 2000 and higher. UAC-related issues on Vista are solved by just ticking a corresponding checkbox (see the picture below).

For the current user and for all users

A simple manifest-based setting lets you choose an appropriate deployment scenario at any convenient time.

Add-in Express ClickOnce Solution

Utilizing the ClickOnce deployment technology, which is a for-the-current-user technology introduced in .NET Framework 2.0, Add-in Express provides a special manifest-driven ClickOnce module that performs common tasks for add-in deployment. When installed on the user PC, it adds a shortcut to the Start Menu that allows the user to register, unregister, and check for updates through its default UI. To handle events related to installing, registering, updating, etc, a special ClickOnce module is provided that also allows replacing the default UI. More about deploying Office plug-ins with ClickOnce solution.

Shadow copy - update your add-ins without user intervention

For non-ClickOnce add-ins, it is possible to install a new add-in version with the current version of the add-in still running. For the new version to run, the user re-starts the host application(s) of your add-in.

Automatic UI synchronizing and clean-up

When a newer add-in version is installed, Add-in Express synchronizes the GUI elements of the previous version with the newer one: your old toolbars, menus, regions and ribbons are removed and new ones are added. As you may expect, all GUI elements are correctly removed when the add-in is uninstalled or turned off. For XCopy installations, the older controls are re-used whenever possible.

Debugging the add-in installation

Have you ever faced the following: you install your add-in and it just doesn't work? Would you like to have some sort of log for such a scenario? Sure, Add-in Express provides such a log.