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VSTO – Visual Studio Tools for Office

• Edit

Jordi Romero

25 Aug, 2015 02:34 PM

Hello, I'm trying to build a repo in AppVeyor but it apparently fails because it doesn't find the VSTO. I've seen in other support threads that people managed to do it but I'm not sure if I need to configure something or I just need to install them (and don't know how) in a before script.

> C:\projects\redbooth-outlook\Redbooth.Outlook\Redbooth.Outlook.csproj(432,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\OfficeTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
 

Thanks for your help!

best,

Jordi

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 26 Aug, 2015 07:42 AM

   

   Hi Jordi,

   Last time I tried the following worked.

   On your developer machine with VS 2013 and VSTO installed (and provided 7z.exe is in PATH):

   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.BuildTasks.dll"
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks\v4.0_12.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks.dll"
   
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\OfficeTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets"
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft.VisualStudio.OfficeTools.targets"
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\VSTO40\*"
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Visual Studio Tools for Office\PIA\*"
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\Bootstrapper\Packages\VSTOR40\*"
   
   reg export "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319\AssemblyFoldersEx\VS11VSTOCommonPIA" c:\projects\vsto1.reg
   reg export "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319\AssemblyFoldersEx\VS11VSTOOffice14PIA" c:\projects\vsto2.reg
   reg export "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319\AssemblyFoldersEx\VS11VSTOOffice15PIA" c:\projects\vsto3.reg
   reg export "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319\AssemblyFoldersEx\VSTO 4.0 Reference Assemblies" c:\projects\vsto4.reg
   
   7z a c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip c:\projects\*.reg
   

   You should get c:\projects\vsto-pack.zip with bunch of assemblies and reg files inside. Upload that zip to somewhere (FTP, Azure blob, AWS S3, etc.)

   Next, we'll assume zip URL is http://myserver.com/vsto-pack.zip.

   To download package on server add this to build script (or appveyor.yml):

   appveyor DownloadFile http://myserver.com/vsto-pack.zip
   

   This will download package to the root of build folder.

   Unpack it to C: thus assemblies go to their original locations:

   7z x -oC:\ vsto-pack.zip
   

   First two assemblies with MSBuild tasks should be put to GAC on build server:

   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools\gacutil" /i C:\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.BuildTasks.dll
   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools\gacutil" /i C:\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks.dll
   

   and finally import registry keys:

   reg import C:\vsto1.reg
   reg import C:\vsto2.reg
   reg import C:\vsto3.reg
   reg import C:\vsto4.reg
   

   I can't check that locally now as I don't have VSTO installed, but I hope you got the idea.

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by roberto.huertas on 29 Oct, 2015 05:12 PM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I've followed the steps you provided but I'm getting an error:

   C:\projects\redbooth-outlook\Redbooth.Outlook.sln" (default target) (1) ->
   "C:\projects\redbooth-outlook\Redbooth.Outlook.Test\Redbooth.Outlook.Test.csproj" (default target) (5) ->
   "C:\projects\redbooth-outlook\Redbooth.Outlook\Redbooth.Outlook.csproj" (default target) (2:2) ->
     C:\projects\redbooth-outlook\Redbooth.Outlook\Redbooth.Outlook.csproj(475,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\OfficeTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
    
       0 Warning(s)
       2 Error(s)
    
   Time Elapsed 00:00:04.16
   Command exited with code 1

   Is it a problem with the Office version (provided your example was working with v12.0? Or maybe I have to copy the target file to the Program files path?

   Thank you for your help.

   Best regards,

   Roberto.

   • Edit

3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 29 Oct, 2015 11:59 PM

   

   Yes, that "recipe" was for VS 2013 (12.0) and you could adopt it for VS 2015 (14.0). I guess there would be not only paths to assemblies and target files, but different strong assembly versions as well.

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by roberto.huertas on 30 Oct, 2015 09:39 AM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I copied the .targets files and now I'm getting this error:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\OfficeTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets(264,9): error MSB3482: An error occurred while signing: Invalid provider type specified.

   I'm not really sure if it's related to the Clickonce certificate or it's still related to the previous VSTO dlls issues.

   I've signed several Clickonce packages before in AppVeyor wihout any problem but in this case, the certificate had a .p12 extension instead of .pfx. I just changed the extension but I suspect (be looking a the error code above) that it has to do with some sort of server incompatibility.

   Do you know anything about this?

   Kind regards,
   Roberto.

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by roberto.huertas on 30 Oct, 2015 09:53 AM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   find attached what I have in my vsto-pack.zip.
   I'm going to try to copy all the other folders and files to its original location and let you know if it works.

   If you have any other idea, please let me know.

   Best regards,
   Roberto

   • Capture.PNG 26.9 KB
   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by roberto.huertas on 30 Oct, 2015 01:37 PM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I've got it working!

   I will summarize the process later in another post

   • Edit

7. Support Staff 7 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 30 Oct, 2015 01:45 PM

   

   Fantastic! :) looking forward to see your solution!

   - Feodor

   • Edit

8. 8 Posted by roberto.huertas on 30 Oct, 2015 02:58 PM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I've confirmed that the previous issue is related to the certificate:

   (VisualStudioForApplicationsBuild target) ->
     C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\OfficeTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets(264,9): error MSB3482: An error occurred while signing: Invalid provider type specified.

   If I use another certificate it works ok. Do you have any insights on this matter?

   I'll take a look at it too.

   Best regards,
   Roberto.

   • Edit

9. 9 Posted by roberto.huertas on 30 Oct, 2015 03:44 PM

   

   Hi Feodor,

   I have fixed the issue transforming the .p12 file to pfx and it's working.

   Best regards,

   Roberto

   • Edit

10. Support Staff 10 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 30 Oct, 2015 04:35 PM

    

    Great! Could you please share final script/solution? Thank you!

    • Edit

11. 11 Posted by roberto.huertas on 06 Nov, 2015 06:36 PM

    

    Hi Feodor,

    please find here the whole explanation of my case and the solution I found to make it work:
    http://codecoding.com/using-appveyor-to-build-a-vsto-project/

    Best regards,
    Roberto.

    • Edit

12. Support Staff 12 Posted by Feodor Fitsner on 06 Nov, 2015 06:44 PM

    

    Looks great, thank you very much!

    • Edit