For a very long time I had a question to “How to deploy a VSTO add-in only via registry entries?”
Seems like I found an answer henceforth I am posting up this blog for the very same question.
Step 1: Build your solution to generate the following files.
Step 2: Open the Regedit and navigate to the following location, according to your choice of application add-in you are developing and willing to deploy.
Excel: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel
Word: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word
PowerPoint: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint
Outlook: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook
Step 3: Create the following entries:
1. Create a unique key name under the AddIns folder
2. Create the following entries under the newly created key
Description (String), FriendlyName (String), Manifest (String) & LoadBehavior (DWord)
For explanation refer to following link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386106.aspx
Step 4: Navigate to the following location in the registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VSTO\Security\Inclusion
Step 5: Generate a new GUID via visual studio GUID generation tool
Step 6: With the new GUID create a new key, under the location navigated earlier in step 4.
Step 7: Under the new key create the following entries
url (String), PublicKey (String)
Step 8: To obtain the public key specific to your add-in, open the *.vsto file in your solution Debug/Release folder and obtain the following pattern string as it is and copy it in the PublicKey entry mentioned in the step 7 above.
Step 9 (Last One): Finally last, but not the least. Create the following illustrated registry enteries, as created upon your development machine. These keys are used for trsuted publisher setup of the VSTO addin and once recreated on the user PC, as same on the development machine the office application is good to go for the VSTO tool created.
And finally open the application of your choice for which you followed the above steps and you add-in should start-up as required along with the application.
