Using 32bit COM addin under MS Office 64 bit

Question

Hi, I am struggling to apply an existing 32bit COM addin to 64bit Microsoft Word 2010.

To make the addin visible to Word, I have used the dllsurrogate-method, as it described here.

The problem is that now addin caused some strange exception when tries to add its toolbar and menu to office's. I cannot figure out, what it is, it seems, that the command bar reference became not valid in unpredicable moments.

Can anyone explain this? Thanks in advance.

Note, that everething is fine when I use the same addin under 32bit Microsoft Word 2010 and more old versions of Ms Office.

Answer 1

32-bit add-ins are not supported on 64-bit. Microsoft recommends to use the 32-bit version of Office unless you run into the memory limitations of a 32-bit process which is only likely to happen if you need to deal with extremely large spreadsheets:

The recommendations for which edition of Office 2010 to install are as follows:

• If users in your organization depend on existing extensions to Office, such as ActiveX controls, third-party add-ins, in-house solutions built on previous versions of Office, or 32-bit versions of programs that interface directly with Office, we recommend that you install 32-bit Office 2010 (the default installation) on computers that are running both 32-bit and 64-bit supported Windows operating systems.

• If some users in your organization are Excel expert users who work with Excel spreadsheets that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB), they can install the 64-bit edition of Office 2010. In addition, if you have in-house solution developers, we recommend that those developers have access to the 64-bit edition of Office 2010 so that they can test and update your in-house solutions on the 64-bit edition of Office 2010.

If you need to go with the 64-bit version because of the memory limitations you have the following options:

• If you have the source code, you can generate a 64-bit version yourself,

• You can contact the vendor for an updated version,

• You can search for an alternative solution.