Visual Studio 2008 project using incorrect version of binary reference from other project

Question

Hi,

I have a VS208 solution with several projects in it. The main WinForms client project has a project reference to a library project within the solution. The library project has three binary references to the Office 2003 interop assemblies v11. These binary references have their Specific Version property set and when I build the library project alone within the solution I see the correct versions of the interop binaries in the debug folder for the library.

However, when I build the Winforms client it pulls in the v12 interop assemblies from elsewhere on my machine. I can't see how to force the Winforms client to also use the v11 binaries as this project doesn't have any direct reference to these binaries. I've done a clean and rebuild on the solution without success and no other project in the solution is using the interop assemblies and therefore referencing the incorrect version.

Any help with forcing the client to build with the v11 binaries would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The version you get will depend on which version was last installed on your machine. You should be using the Office PIAs so you don't need the interop libraries. You can download them from here. That PIA also needs to be deployed on the target machine.

This is largely history on VS2010, it supports embedding the interop types. Very desirable and a very good reason to consider upgrading.