Outlook Addins - Not a pleasant ride
time to read 2 min | 261 words

I'm trying to write an Outlook add-in, and I just can't believe how hard it is to get it to work.

For a start, to get it to work, you need to close Outlook, install the project (run the MSI) and then open Outlook. And the support that you get for errors and the like is zero. Outlook will happily eat errors and pretend that everything is fine.

I'd an exception in my startup code that took half an hour to find, because I thought I didn't registered it properly. Which bring me to the next point, where is the support for add in developers? Some minimal things, like easily being able to debug the add-in, is a must.

Currently I still can't debug my add-in, and resorted to logging every other sentence, which has yet to reveal to me the reason for some pretty basic things that are failing.

Then we get to the point were you shouldn't use the Primary Interop Assemblies that are generated by default, you need to install them by going back to the Office installation and choosing something like ".NET Programmability Support".

Sign, I currently have just ~500 lines of code, most of them dealing with setting up the UI, and I can't even get a simple list box to work.

If this goes on, I'm afraid that I'll have to just give up. I've more important things to do.

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