Search code examples
c#outlook-addinword-addins

Distributing Microsoft.Office.Tools Dlls along with Office addins

I wrote C# Office add-ins and I'm installing them manually by distributing them along with their assembly dependencies (Microsoft.Office.Tools.Common.v4.0.Utilities.dll and Microsoft.Office.Tools.Outlook.v4.0.Utilities.dll) and setting the proper registry entries for the add-ins.

I just wanted to verify that there is no legal limitation of distributing those two Microsoft DLLs along with my add-ins?

Solution

  • The short answer is yes, you can redistribute Microsoft Office Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA). The more solution developed using Microsoft Office, the more copies of Office is sold. You can find the EULA while installing PIA on one of the wizard pages.

    In the image below is EULA for Microsoft Office 2010: enter image description here

    You can also take a different route, where you don't need to redistribute the PIA. Here is an excerpt from Microsoft Documentation:

    If the project targets the .NET Framework 4 or later, the Embed Interop Types property for the assembly reference is set to True by default. By using this setting, your solution does not require the PIA on end-user computers.