VSTO

Why

So, why VSTO here in an OpenSource themed wiki?

1. since 2015 .NET is opensource (really)
2. C# ist open source
3. you can get the Visual Studio Comunity Edition for free (really free also for commercial use, if you are not working for a > 250 men company)
4. Word an Excel are running fine with wine (see #MSOffice_2010_and_Wine) - Outlook not tested yet,

In most cases Word, Excel and Powerpoint are the most often used programs in business for daily communication. It is like it is. Beeing able - now - without any restrictions, to program MS-Office legally also for commercial usage. The only "drawback" is: you HAVE TO register the application and therefore create a microsoft account to be able to work with it.

Troubleshooting

Cannot create Excel projects

• [ENG]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13695526/why-cant-i-create-an-excel-vsto-workbook-project-in-visual-studio-2010/29037321#29037321 Stackoverflow|
• [GER]: Social MSDN

Most likely: You have an PERSONAL.xslb File in the XSLT start folder (see above posts).

Usng Codesigning Certificates

From here to there look over the boarder and use Visual Studio 2013 to develop applications in C#. E. g. for Office VSTO Addins. I was confronted with the problem, that I could not start my own developed applications. Office merely refused to open and run the AddIn. To make a (very) long story short, this article saved my life:

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2013/06/14/signing-windows-8-applications-using-an-internal-pki.aspx
• and https://wiki.cac.washington.edu/display/infra/Extracting+Certificate+and+Private+Key+Files+from+a+.pfx+File

Who is affected by the same problem can also follow this guide

• https://robindotnet.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/windows-8-and-clickonce-the-definitive-answer-2/
• https://robindotnet.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/windows-8-and-clickonce-the-definitive-answer-revisited/

I don't comment this behaviour of Windows in this case. Certainly it is good to have a strong certificate chain in a company. But hey microsoft, in some cases one simple just want to develop and share software in trusted environments without such a huge impact ;-) I am fulfilled with the believe, that MS sometimes thinks not only big, but practical.

Signtool

Thanks to this article, I could solve a lot of problems:

• https://robindotnet.wordpress.com/category/visual-studio-tools-for-office-vsto/

You basically can find the path to signtool.exe searching within the MS Visual Studio installation directory:

cd C:\Program Files (x86)
dir /s /b signtool.exe

which leads to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\Bin\signtool.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\bin\x64\signtool.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\bin\x86\signtool.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\arm\signtool.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x64\signtool.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x86\signtool.exe

set MySignTool="C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x86\signtool.exe"
set PathToKeyFilePfx= ...
set ProjectDir= ...
set TargetFileName= PATH_TO_DLL

"%MySignTool" sign /f %PathToKeyFilePfx%" /p MY_PASSWORD /v "%ProjectDir%\obj\Debug\%TargetFileName%"

VS Settings

Reset VS settings

• Devenv Command Line Switches: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xee0c8y7.aspx

• As admin: startmenu -> VS2013 -> VS-Tools -> Developer Command Prompt VS2103 (not native!)

devenv /resetuserdata
devenv /setup

• As user: Open Developer Command Prompt VS2103 (not native!)

devenv /resetuserdata 
devenv /setup 
devenv /resetsettings