thanasis_b

Hi

I wonder if I can write a MS Office add-in with VSTO that uses some third part licensed components. How the licenses will be "transfered" to the executing process (e.g. Outlook.exe)

Can I use licensed components in my add-in or I have to use only the components that are shipped with Visual Studio (For example I've tried it with TxTextControl and is not working).



Re: Visual Studio Tools for Office MS Office add-in with licensed components

thanasis_b

I wonder if the reason that no one reply to this is that no one needed to use licensed third part components in an add-in or there is no way to do this




Re: Visual Studio Tools for Office MS Office add-in with licensed components

John R. Durant - MSFT

You can use third-party components, chart and reporting controls, etc. with VSTO SE or VSTO 2005. I am not sure what you mean by "transferring" the license. Most third-party vendors provide their own guidance for installing, distributing, and licensing their product. the VSTO tools are agnostic in these matters. For example, many vendors provide an MSI to install their control or component. You can add that MSI to the setup routines for your add-in. If there are licensing requirements that inform that installation and running of the control, the vendor provides that guidance.

Here are more Outlook resources to assist you:

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnrdurant/archive/2005/12/07/vsto_outlook_resourcelist.aspx

Best,

jrd






Re: Visual Studio Tools for Office MS Office add-in with licensed components

thanasis_b

First of all I'd like to thank you for your answer.

I know that if the licenses are only in the licenses.licx of a dll that uses the third-party component and not in the licenses.licx of exe (that calls this dll) then third-party component is not working. I think that this is fair enough because third-party vendors do not want someone to write just a wrapper of their component.

Besides, most of third-party vendors (that I know) have one or more redistributable files that I just have to include in my setup (for a stand alone application) and they do not provide any msm or msi for redistribution.

Now add-in is a dll and the main exe that calls the add-in is the Outlook.exe. So, how these licenses will be embedded (that is what I mean by "transferring") in the Outlook.exe