My VSTO 3.0 Outlook addin doesn’t load

[Wayne]

My VSTO 3.0 Outlook addin doesn’t load

[Sorry if this isn't the right forum for this... technically not VBA but this

is the closet forum I could find]

I'm trying to diagnose why my Outlook plugin written in C#/VSTO 3.0/VS 2008

doesn't load after being installed.

The plugin works awesomely on my development machine, which has Visual

Studio 2008 installed. I can't expect all my users to have all the

prerequisites though so I went through these steps to write an installer:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc563937(loband).aspx

I installed the add-in on a fresh Windows XP SP 2 machine with a fresh

install of Outlook 2007. It installs all the prereqs ok (.NET 3.5, VSTO 3.0

runtime, Windows Installer 3.1, 2007 PIAs). Outlook starts but the add-in

isn't run. If I go to the Add-ins tab in the Trust Center, I see my add-in in

the "Inactive Application Add-ins" section with the message "Not loaded. A

runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in.".

Not sure how to find the specific error so I can fix it.

The reg keys look ok. Under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\BlahAddin I see

Description, FriendlyName, LoadBehavior (set to 3 until it fails after which

if becomes set to 2), and Manifest.

Tried the VSTO_SUPPRESSDISPLAYALERTS environment variable trick and then

launched Outlook from the command line but no output came out.

I have remote debugging more or less working but I'm not sure what to look

for. I don't see my DLL loaded when I attach to Outlook, but then again maybe

managed DLLs don't show up the same way in VS.

Any other ideas on next steps I could follow to produce a specific error I

can diagnose?

Thanks!

(Cross-posted to Stack Overflow, but still haven't figured this out:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1330282/my-vsto-3-0-outlook-addin-doesnt-load )

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Re: My VSTO 3.0 Outlook addin doesn’t load

Did you set the security? Without full trust a VSTO addin won't run.

If you did that and see the trust settings in the Framework configuration

tool you'd probably need to use Fusion logging and to study the logs to see

what's failing (Fusion is the managed code loader).

See

http://blogs.msdn.com/vsod/archive/2008/04/22/Troubleshooting-com-add-in-load-failures.aspx

There's also a managed forum specific to VSTO at the MSDN forums.

"Wayne" <Wayne> wrote in message

news:548727E5-5D76-42AC-A09E-CDED05868D50@microsoft.com...
> [Sorry if this isn't the right forum for this... technically not VBA but
> this
> is the closet forum I could find]

> I'm trying to diagnose why my Outlook plugin written in C#/VSTO 3.0/VS
> 2008
> doesn't load after being installed.

> The plugin works awesomely on my development machine, which has Visual
> Studio 2008 installed. I can't expect all my users to have all the
> prerequisites though so I went through these steps to write an installer:
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc563937(loband).aspx

> I installed the add-in on a fresh Windows XP SP 2 machine with a fresh
> install of Outlook 2007. It installs all the prereqs ok (.NET 3.5, VSTO
> 3.0
> runtime, Windows Installer 3.1, 2007 PIAs). Outlook starts but the add-in
> isn't run. If I go to the Add-ins tab in the Trust Center, I see my add-in
> in
> the "Inactive Application Add-ins" section with the message "Not loaded. A
> runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in.".

> Not sure how to find the specific error so I can fix it.

> The reg keys look ok. Under
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\BlahAddin I see
> Description, FriendlyName, LoadBehavior (set to 3 until it fails after
> which
> if becomes set to 2), and Manifest.

> Tried the VSTO_SUPPRESSDISPLAYALERTS environment variable trick and then
> launched Outlook from the command line but no output came out.

> I have remote debugging more or less working but I'm not sure what to look
> for. I don't see my DLL loaded when I attach to Outlook, but then again
> maybe
> managed DLLs don't show up the same way in VS.

> Any other ideas on next steps I could follow to produce a specific error I
> can diagnose?

> Thanks!

> (Cross-posted to Stack Overflow, but still haven't figured this out:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1330282/my-vsto-3-0-outlook-addin-doesnt-load )