PowerPoint 2003 COM Add-In

Question

I have a PowerPoint Add-in. I created a setup for it and installed it. It works fine on my machine but the problem is when I install it on a fresh machine with a fresh copy of PowerPoint 2003, the add-in installs successfully but there is no COM Add-in option (menu) in PowerPoint in Tools -> COM Add-in and my add-in is not loaded.

I don't know why I have COM Add-in option in my development machine but not on the fresh machine. There must be some sort of setting or some other thing required before it can work.

So the question is there any other thing needed to download or install to be able to install COM Add-ins?

I developed the add-in in .NET 3.5 using C#, if that helps. Also I'm using Windows XP SP2.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I don't recall ever having seen a COM add-in option on the PPT 2003 tools menu, but I don't use .NET. Perhaps it's something that Visual Studio adds.

Or another possibility ... perhaps the menu item only appears when there are user-uninstallable COM add-ins installed.

With PPA add-ins, you can install them via registry entry in either HKCU or HKLM. If HKCU, then appear on the Tools | Add-ins dialog and the user can unload or remove them. If HKLM, they're hidden from the user.

I know there's one COM add-in installed to my copy of PowerPoint; just checked and it's registered in HKLM. Perhaps that's why there's no COM addins option on the Tools menu.

You can verify whether the COM add-in is loaded (even if from HKLM) with a bit of VBA run from within PPT:

Dim oCOMAddin as Object

For Each oCOMAddin In Application.COMAddIns
    Debug.Print oCOMAddin.ProgID & vbTab _
    & oCOMAddin.Description
Next oCOMAddin

That should at least tell you whether your add-in is properly loading or not.