In Part 5 of this unintended series I provided complete details on how to create an Excel Automation Add-in using the COM Shim Wizard from Microsoft. It works for development, not for deployment. I’ve found that in the deployment system some registry keys are missing.

It seems to me that this is the fault of the COM Shim Wizard since that creates some of the registry entries. I did put in the fix documented by Andrew Whitechapel and I’m sure it will help, but without the right registry keys that specific fix won’t make this code work. It seems there is something I’m not adding to the Setup project. You’d think adding the Project Output from my code, and both shim projects would have done the trick, but something manual may still need to be added. In a comment to Part 5 a visitor says he needed to add Extensibility.DLL to his Setup project. Sure, I can try that, but I don’t believe that’s what’s causing the registry entries to get lost.

I’ve provided below a detailed list of the registry keys that are present, and I’ve highlighted the missing ones. I’m really hoping someone from Microsoft can take a look, maybe follow my instructions from Part 5, and tell us exactly what’s missing. I’ve masked the name of my executables and GUIDs, and some of the lines wrap in this page, but that shouldn’t make any difference for someone who knows how to read the registry.

 ; ok