Problems referencing Extensibility dll in managed add-in

Weevie

I apologise for posting this in here but the kind of work we're doing seems to fall between the cracks as regards the MSDN forums.

It's actually a kind of deployment issue but it's also a managed Word Add-In issue (and possibly an installshield issue but I'm not sure about that yet and I'd leave that for the IS forums).

We used to deploy a managed word addin (written in c#) along with it's COM shim via the VS2005 setup and deployment project. We've switched to IS12 and rebuilt the deployment and now we're missing something in the deployment.

The COM shim fails with an automation error when trying to instantiate the managed add-in via a createobject.

This is because during deployment the managed addin has not been registered for COM.

If I try to manually register the managed addin using regasm I get the following output:

RegAsm : error RA0000 : Could not load file or assembly 'Extensibility, Version= 7.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

This suggests that the regasm in the install is failing becuase I'm not deploying something.

Now I'm deploying the following files along with the COM shim and the managed add-in:

• vb6ext.olb
• MSADDNDR.DLL (to the windows folder)
• Interop.VBIDE.dll
• Interop.Office.dll
• Interop.Word.dll
• asycfilt.dll
• comcat.dll
• msvbvm.dll
• msvcrt.dll
• oleaut32
• olepro.dll
• stdole2.tlb

I also install as pre-requisites the 3 parts of KB908002.

I guess what I'm asking is what am I missing given the return from Regasm What is this 'extensibility' component What physical file does this refer to.

We've hit a brick wall here and this has stopped a biggish release in it's tracks so we'd very much appreciate an answer if at all possible.

If you can think of a better place to post this then please feel free to redirect me!

Cheers in advance.

Dennis Wallentin

The present version (2.0) of the COM Shim Wizard does not support the IRibbonextensibility. This is probably the cause of the issues You face. AFAIK, there is no date set when version 3.0 ( ) will be out so until then You need to deploy an unshimmed managed COM add-in.

Andrew Whitechapel - MSFT

What Dennis says is true (I'm working on the update to the COM shim wizards). However, I don't think it applies in this case.

First, from the description it seems that Weevie is using a custom shim, not the shim that is generated by the shim wizards. The wizard-generated shim doesn't use CreateObject to instantiate the managed add-in (it uses AppDomain.CreateInstance).

Second, the issue seems to be related to extensibility.dll and not the IRibbonExtensibility interface.

You say you have applied the KB908002 patch and its sub-patches. This means that extensibility.dll is deployed (one of the sub-patches is an MSI for this DLL). The only other possibility is that the CLR's fusion cannot find this DLL. It would need to find it when you load the managed add-in (even for registration via regasm) because it is listed in the add-in's metadata as a dependency. Normal fusion rules apply. So, for fusion to find it, it needs to be in the same folder as the managed add-in (or certain specific subfolders) or in the GAC.

You probably don't want to distribute extensibility.dll with every single add-in (and probably shouldn't either). So, you should check whether it is correctly installed in the GAC (and install it with gacutil if it isn't).

Weevie

IRibbonExtensibility ! Haven't got as far as Office 2007/Vista yet!

Andy you're absolutely right. The problem is KB908002, or rather getting Installshield to deploy it as a prereq. As I said it all worked fine under a VS2005 Setup and Deployment project.

Huh, who'd've guessed that it was Installshield that was the problem eh

Thanks again guys.

BlakeCopenhaver

I¡¯m currently working on a deployment project for a Microsoft Word shared add-in using Installshield. Unfortunately, I¡¯ve ran into some similar problems with the add-in fix KB908002 that Weevie has described here. I cannot seem to get Installshield to properly implement the following 2 files (lockbackRegKey.msi, office2003-kb907417sfxcab-ENU.exe) as a prerequisite. I was wondering if anyone has had any luck since getting these files into an install project other than a VS2005 project. I¡¯m not sure if it is something I am doing wrong or this method is just not possible. Thank you in advance for your time and/or any feedback.

Thanks,

Blake