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Configuring a Computer to Develop Office Solutions

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You must install the following prerequisites before you can use the Microsoft Office developer tools in Visual Studio 2010:

  • Visual Studio

  • .NET Framework

  • Microsoft Office

For most development tasks, you must also install and register the primary interop assemblies for Microsoft Office in the global assembly cache.

For detailed installation steps, see How to: Configure a Computer to Develop Office Solutions.

Visual Studio

The Office developer tools are included only with the following editions of Visual Studio 2010:

  • Visual Studio 2010 Professional

  • Visual Studio 2010 Premium

  • Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

The Office developer tools are an optional component of Visual Studio. These tools are installed by default when you install one of the Visual Studio editions listed above. If you customize the Visual Studio installation by selecting which features to install, select Microsoft Office Developer Tools during setup to install the tools. For more information about installing Visual Studio, see Installation and Setup Essentials.

The Office developer tools include the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime and features that are integrated into Visual Studio itself, such as project templates and designers. For more information about the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime, see Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime Overview.

.NET Framework

You can use the Office developer tools in Visual Studio 2010 to create solutions that target the .NET Framework 3.5 or the .NET Framework 4. The .NET Framework 4 is automatically installed when you install Visual Studio 2010. If you want to create solutions that target the .NET Framework 3.5, you must make sure this version of the framework is installed on the development computer too.

Note

You cannot use the Office developer tools in Visual Studio 2010 to create solutions that target the .NET Framework 3.0 or earlier. For more information about supported versions of the .NET Framework, see Designing and Creating Office Solutions.

Microsoft Office

You can use Visual Studio 2010 to create solutions for Microsoft Office 2010 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

You must have one of the following versions of Office installed locally on the development computer:

  • Any suite edition of the 2007 Microsoft Office system or Microsoft Office 2010

  • Any of the following standalone applications:

    • Excel 2007 or Excel 2010

    • InfoPath 2007 or InfoPath 2010

    • Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010

    • PowerPoint 2007 or PowerPoint 2010

    • Project 2007 or Project 2010

    • Visio 2007 or Visio 2010

    • Word 2007 or Word 2010

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) must be installed as part of Office.

Visual Studio 2010 does not support creating Office solutions for Microsoft Office 365 or a version of Microsoft Office 2010 that was delivered via Click-to-Run.

Side-By-Side Installations of Microsoft Office

Visual Studio 2010 does not support creating Office solutions when Microsoft Office 2010 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system (or different versions of individual Office applications, such as Excel 2007 and Excel 2010) are installed side-by-side on the development computer. To create Office solutions by using the Office developer tools in Visual Studio 2010, install just one version of Office on the development computer.

Although you can install only one version of Office on the development computer, you can create Office solutions that run in both Microsoft Office 2010 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system on end user computers. For more information, see Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office.

Primary Interop Assemblies for Microsoft Office

The Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs) must be installed and registered in the global assembly cache to perform the following development tasks:

  • To create a document-level project.

  • To run or debug any Office project that targets the .NET Framework 3.5.

  • To run or debug any Office project that targets the .NET Framework 4, and in which you have changed the Embed Interop Types property of all the PIA references in your project to False. 

You can create and build application-level projects without having the PIAs installed in the global assembly cache. However, if you do this, you cannot run or debug the projects in the scenarios listed above.

When you install Office on the development computer, the PIAs are installed and registered in the global assembly cache by default in the following cases:

  • The .NET Framework 1.1 or later is installed before you install the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

  • The .NET Framework 2.0 or later is installed before you install Microsoft Office 2010.

If you install Office on a development computer that does not have the .NET Framework installed yet, or if you modify Office setup to not install the PIAs, you must install the primary interop assemblies separately. For more information, see How to: Install Office Primary Interop Assemblies.

Note

Visual Studio 2010 installs private copies of the PIAs outside of the global assembly cache. When you create an Office project, the project references these copies of the PIAs. However, the PIAs must also be installed and registered in the global assembly cache to perform the development tasks listed above. For more information, see Office Primary Interop Assemblies.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Configure a Computer to Develop Office Solutions

How to: Install the Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime Redistributable

How to: Install Office Primary Interop Assemblies

Concepts

Features Available by Office Application and Project Type

Other Resources

Getting Started (Office Development in Visual Studio)