Office Integation with my app.

[NiravVyas]

Hello Everyone,

I am working on a application where I will need extensive use of word documents integrated with the application,meaning will need to open,edit,save,create,delete etc the word files. I just had a thought if I will integrate MS office librbaries I can acheive this task but what scares me is will it need the MS Office installed on each of the users system where the app will be installed. If the answer is yes then it will mean each of the user needs to have a license version of MS Office am not sure if that is good for my apps in terms of buisness. Can someone please shade light on this, or suggest some alternatives to this. I am really confused. Any help is appreciated.


Thanks
Nirav

 

[JohnH]

VB applications doesn't interact directly with the Office automation COM servers, they reference and make calls through interop libraries (PIA). For the automation code to work at runtime the underlying Office libraries must be present. If Office is not installed the app can't perform automation, but it will work as long as the target PIAs is installed. PIAs are freely distributed from MS, I also see there is a bootstrapper available for Office 2010 PIA so that you can add it as prerequisite for automatic installation when deploying. There exist instructions on how to add previous version PIAs as prerequisites as well.