Inquiry Regarding Excel Add-In Installer Issue

[Sham Khole]

Recently, I developed an installer for our Excel add-in, and while it successfully installs on most systems, we have received reports of an error occurring on some systems. The error message reads: "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have appropriate permission to access the item."

Upon further investigation, it appears that even if the add-in manages to open on these systems, it exhibits abnormal behavior. It shows below issue.

[Govert van Drimmelen]

Hi Sham,

 

What you show in the picture is exactly what happens when the bitness of the add-in does not match the excel installation.

For example if you try to open the 32-bit add-in under 64-bit Excel or vice versa.

 

There’s normally a message like this

then if you continue you see the output in your picture.

 

It might be that the installer’s mechanism for detecting the bitness of the Office installation fails on those machines.

That code is around here: https://github.com/Excel-DNA/WiXInstaller/blob/a24135bf0dc581724c5a144d1c1dac2bcfa64fd7/Source/InstallerCA/CustomAction.cs#L33

 

You might be able to get an install log to give you some more clues on what happens.

 

Please let us know if you find out anything more.

 

-Govert

Upon further investigation, it appears that even if the add-in manages to open on these systems, it exhibits abnormal behavior. It shows below issue.

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[Sham Khole]

Hi Govert, Regarding the installer's mechanism for detecting the bitness of the Office installation, I want to mention that I used Inno Setup to create the installer for our Excel add-in extension. Additionally, I employed a hardware-based token to sign the extension file before distributing the installer to end-users.

While I understand that the code snippet you provided is specific to the WiX installer, I will explore similar mechanisms within Inno Setup to ensure proper detection of the Office installation bitness.

[Govert van Drimmelen]

Hi Sham,

 

It’s important to note that the concern is not the bitness of Windows, but that of the Office installation.

One can install either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version of Office onto a 64-bit version of Windows.

In the past, the default was the 32-bit version of Office, even though Windows was 64-bit.

That’s no longer the case, but there will be such installations around.

 

File -> Account -> About Excel will show you the details

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[Sham Khole]

Thanks for the clarification!

Now that I understand the difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office, could you please guide me on what steps I should take to address the below issue in my Excel DNA Add-In? Should I make any adjustments to my code or settings based on the version of Excel I'm using?

[Dũng Vũ]

Hi Sham Khole

You need to have knowledge of Excel, basic Vba, then learn basic C#. Finally, we can work with Excel DNA well. At least C# and excel

Learn from this example: https://github.com/govert/RibbonStart
I started from there

happy coding

Thanks and Best Regards

Vu Van Dung

Vào Th 4, 8 thg 5, 2024 vào lúc 12:26 Sham Khole <shamk...@gmail.com> đã viết:

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