In this video you will see Petra provides a brief overview of the Outlook add-in platform and its capabilities. The add-in platform helps developers create native Outlook solutions, so users can get more done within Outlook.
In short you can,
– Learn what makes up an add-in
– Get a high-level look at how to build one
– Learn about the features the platform has recently released
– Also know what’s coming in the future.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Connect/2017/T194/player
Happy coding!!
Recently one of my developer customer reported that he designed a new Outlook addin (apps for office) which fails to load and it throws the error “This app could not be started. Close this dialog to ignore the problem or click “Restart” to try again.”
During troubleshooting we noticed that this issue occur because protected mode is not enabled for the Restricted Sites zone in Internet Explorer. By re-enabling the protected mode for restricted sites in IE, helped them moving forward.
[Update] For additional info, please refer the related blogpost.
Hope this helps.
Recently i worked with this app developer, who created a custom Outlook add-in through which they try to make use of custom ASP.Net Web Service/Web API using REST call.
This URL works fine from the browser on a machine running the Outlook with the Add-in installed. But it fails with the below error from within the Outlook Add-In when they try make REST API call against their custom ASP.Net Web Service/Web API:
Exception : ThisAddIn_Startup:System.Net.WebException: The remote name could not be resolved: ‘customdomain.com’
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
During the troubleshooting, we isolated the issue out of Outlook APIs and tried isolating other pieces involved in the given scenario.
Upon further debugging, fiddler/network logs clearly pointed out the error happens when we try to call WebAPI/Web Service from add-in which fails to hit the load balancer. So we worked with their networking team/vendor, configured their load balancer to work correctly. It helped to call the WebAPI/Web Service from their custom Outlook add-in without any problem.
Hope this helps.
Once you installed Visual Studio 2013 and tried building a custom Outlook add-in you will the see the Outlook 2013 add-in template available.
Recently one of my customer asked, what if he wants to build Outlook 2010 add-in and he failed to see the respective template for it.
I suggested the following steps to try, which helped him to move forward.
Steps to try:
At Visual Studio > select New Project dialog > change .NET Framework target version to 4.0 > now you’ll then see the Office 2010 project templates. (below is the snapshot)
Hope this helps.
Last week we announced the release of Office 2016. Next interesting stuff pops in our mind is that what’s new in Office 2016 for the developers. I want to mention few of them here:
– New names for apps for Office and SharePoint – I blogged about this earlier, New name for Apps for Office and SharePoint? Office and SharePoint Add-ins
– Add-in commands for mail – Overview of add-in commands for mail
– Manifest for add-in commands – Create a manifest for add-in commands
– Provides access to properties for Office theme colors – Context.Theme property
So the next question would be where to get started? Visit http://dev.office.com, check for http://dev.office.com/getting-started/addins and try it out.
In addition, you can refer the Office Dev blog post which talks more about it & make use of it.
As you aware that you can use Office and SharePoint Add-ins to extend Office applications with content directly from the web or to extend SharePoint websites. But do you know the “new name” for “apps for Office and SharePoint”? Yes, the platform name will be changed from "apps for Office and SharePoint" to "Office and SharePoint Add-ins". Currently the related products, documentation, samples, and other resources are getting updated to reflect the change – so that this change will help better distinguish the extension platform from Office Add-ins (applications). The following table lists the names that are changing and the new names:
In Office Developer tools for Visual Studio (Office Web apps, VSTO, COM add-ins) it will be further differentiated as the following:
Hope this helps.
Like earlier, I was involved in migration of VS 2013 C++ Outlook add-in project which was created in Visual Studio 2010. During the compilation I encountered the following error:
In general, CL.exe is Visual Studio Compiler. So it should be in your Visual Studio installation directory. if there is no cl.exe in the directory, then either you can repair or reinstall the Visual Studio.
I tried the earlier trick, but it haven’t worked for me – I tried changing the Platform toolset, but it haven’t worked. Then I fixed the issue by pointing the Executable directories path to the place where CL.exe exists. Check “Configuration Properties” > “VC++ Directories” > “Executable directories” and add the path.
Adding the snapshot as well for your reference:
After setting the correct path, the compilation went without any issue. Happy debugging!!
Couple of days earlier, I worked with a developer who created a C++ Form Region add-in for Outlook 2010 and it worked for them years without any problem. Recently one of their customers upgraded from Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2013. After that started noticing that the Outlook failed to load the add-in. During the analysis, we confirmed that there is no update in code base or we failed to see any issues with their Form region add-in and the worst part is the issue can be repro only at this specific environment. Enabling checkpoints at their code helped us to point out that whenever the add-in is trying to load Form Region interfaces it’s not pointing to Office 2013 interfaces, strangely it points to older Office 2010’s interfaces; By putting debugging pointers, we saw that their add-in tries to do and fails internally by telling…"This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{00063001-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}’ failed due to the following error: Library unregistered. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8002801D (TYPE_E_LIBNOTREGISTERED)).”
SysInternal’s Procmon also pointed the same. We found that their add-in is failing to load the entry, which points to older Outlook 2010. On checking registry editor at the machine, we saw few older registry entries left over of earlier Outlook versions somehow – that was odd. In this scenario, fresh install of the Office suite or repairing the Outlook is the recommended way to move ahead to avoid these type of installation related issues.
Note: Later we heard that they done the backup of this entry, deleted it and now the Outlook form-region addin loads the correct TypeLib and their add-in is working ‘fine’ for them.
Recently I tried migrating the C++ Outlook add-in project (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee941475(v=office.14).aspx). This project was created in Visual Studio 2010 and we tried migrating to Visual Studio 2013.
During compilation, I encountered the following error:
error MSB6006: "CL.exe" exited with formula –1073741515The same code compiled, worked successfully in Visual Studio 2010. We haven’t done any changes in Visual Studio 2013, but still we got the above error.
I fixed the issue by changing the Platform Toolset value and it helped me to compile successfully. I tried the following (refer the snapshot): Changed Platform Toolset value to Visual Studio 2013.
Happy debugging
You can download free or paid or trial versions of Developer tools and macros for Office versions 2003, 2007 and 2010 at Marketplace….It’s available for the products like Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher, SharePoint and Access.
The below two are the two the queries raised by the customers who have Exchange Server and Project Server at their end that I worked, “How to configure Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2010?”. Based on that I am adding the related info at this blog post which can be useful to folks who are interested ….
Once you configure and integrate Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2010 enables Project Server 2010 users to view Project Server tasks in Microsoft Office Outlook. This functionality replaces the Outlook Add-in task status reporting functionality for non-time–phased tasks that is available in earlier versions of Project Server and enables task assignment updates that use percent complete or total work remaining. These task assignment updates are then auto-submitted to the Task Status Manager when the tasks are updated in the Exchange client.
Refer the detailed articles Configure Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server 2007 and Configure Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server 2010. In addition, you can download and watch the video, the steps involved in configuring integration with Exchange Server 2010 & Project Server 2010.
Also customers have the query, configuring Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server 2010 Impersonation – you can refer Project Server 2010 & Exchange Server 2010 Impersonation article for further information.
Hope this helps!!
Try the following steps to disable add-ins in Outlook 2007 (it also applies to InfoPath 2007, Project 2007 and Visio 2007)
On the Tools menu, click Trust Center.
In the categories pane, click Macro Security.
In the details pane, select No Warnings and Disable All Macros or Warnings for signed macros; all unsigned macros are disabled.
In the categories pane, click Add-ins.
In the details pane, select Apply macro security settings to installed add-ins
Enjoy 
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