What is the best way to detect if Excel 2003 is installed?

Question

I'm using Wix v3.0 (which boils down to an MSI installer) and I'm trying to author a condition to ensure that Excel 2003 is installed. What is the best (most robust) way to detect the presence of Excel 2003 on a machine?

I've seen lots of different suggestions, but no definitive or authoritative answer.

Answer 1

you could try checking the registry, or perhaps the typical install path for excel.

Answer 2

This solution talks about checking the registry for some keys. Have you tried it?

Answer 3

We check the InstallRoot registry key at:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\InstallRoot

(Replace 12.0 with the relevant version number for your application).

This seems to work well for versions 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007 at least.

Answer 4

Excel (Office) is also installed by windows installer. Why are you not checking for the excel component codes?

Answer 5

I found a file in the Office 2003 toolkit, Office 2003 Keypath and Default Installation Settings workbooks that contains all the GUIDs for the Components of Office. Based on this, I used a Component Search to locate the Core Excel component. In WiX my condition looks like this:

    <Property Id="EXCEL2003INSTALLED">
      <!-- This is the Component Id of Global_Excel_Core -->
      <ComponentSearch Id="DetectExcel2003" Guid="{A2B280D4-20FB-4720-99F7-40C09FBCE10A}" Type="file"/>
    </Property>
    <Condition Message="This application requires Excel 2003 to be installed."><![CDATA[Installed OR EXCEL2003INSTALLED]]></Condition>

This page has Component Guids for other Office Apps and other versions.

Answer 6

See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/244517/where-is-a-reliable-registry-key-to-find-install-location-of-excel-2007/