Error in loading DLL - Why doesn’t my VSTO installer work?
My problem and solution
I have a workbook with a significant amount of VBA code, most of which calls methods of a VSTO add-in containing lots of business logic which has been ported from VBA into VB.Net. This works fine on developer machines, but when we create an installer and deploy the add-in, it doesn’t work right. When I load the spreadsheet, a VBA sub, “OnOpen” is called, and throws up an error (on a line where it calls my .Net code), “Error in loading DLL”.
The solution in my case was to run the same command line to register the dependent DLLs that we always do as part of developer machine setup. I added a setup step to the vdproj installer project which runs a batch file to execute these steps.
Other solutions
This post is mainly here to collate helpful resources for debugging VSTO Add-In installations.
Pragmateek Troubleshooting Guide
This is a great run-down of errors and their causes:
Error in loading DLL when referencing a TLB
Add-In Spy
Registry Entries for VSTO Add-ins (MSDN)
This MSDN article specifies values for LoadBehaviour and how to specify the correct .vsto path in the Manifest field.
Deploying an Office Solution by Using Windows Installer (MSDN)
This MSDN article refers to [creating an InstallShield LE installer project] for your add-in(https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc442767.aspx).