COM AddIn for Outlook Tries to Install Self on Startup

Question

Hi,

I have an outlook addin that I have been developing for some time now, and am experiencing a problem. If I have a computer with two 'administrator' users (call them User A and User B), the addin installs and runs just fine as long as the same user tries to run it. In other words, if User A installs the addin, then User A has no problem using.

The strange behavior comes in when we see the following scenario: User A installs the addin (for all users), User B launches outlook and observes that the addin is trying to install itself yet again. If User B cancels out of the 'install', he can then go and use the addin just fine.

Right now, I use office's registry key propagation to do an 'all users' install, and I inspected the registry for any duplications and found none. I even used the officeins tool to try and detect if there was any duplication going on, and found none.

I'm really bewildered as to why the addin would try to install itself over and over again. Does anyone know why this might be happening?

Answer 1

This has to do with junk being absent from the registry (at least in my case). Using the 'Event Viewer' in windows will allow you to look at the MSI installer logs that point to what registry key was missing.

Here is a great article about installing an outlook addin for all users:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mshneer/archive/2007/09/04/deploying-your-vsto-add-in-to-all-users-part-i.aspx