Which framework to use for developing Microsoft Office 365 add-in

Question

• I am thinking to develop a Microsoft Office 365 Excel Add-in. I am working with Linux as my Operating System.
• I came across Visual Studio IDE and Yeoman Generator, but Visual Studio IDE doesn't work with Linux, and Yeoman Generator works but when I do npm start I get a error saying

Error: Unable to start debugging.
Error: Unable to sideload the Office Add-in.
Error: Platform not support Linux.

• Do I need to use Windows or MAC only for the development of Microsoft Office Add-in?
• Or can I make use of any other framework like electron but I am not able to find much of a documentation on other frameworks.

Answer 1

I think the problem is that npm start is trying to open desktop Office and sideload the add-in. But you get that error because there is no desktop Office for Linux. You have to sideload and debug in Office on the web if you want to develop on a Linux computer.

Also, if you used yeoman generator, there should be a script named start:web in the package.json file. So you can try automatically sideload on the web like this:

Run the following command in the root directory of your project. When you run this command, the local web server starts. Replace "{url}" with the URL of an Excel document on your OneDrive or a SharePoint library to which you have permissions.

npm run start:web -- --document {url}

The following are examples.

npm run start:web -- --document https://contoso.sharepoint.com/:t:/g/EZGxP7ksiE5DuxvY638G798BpuhwluxCMfF1WZQj3VYhYQ?e=F4QM1R
npm run start:web -- --document https://1drv.ms/x/s!jkcH7spkM4EGgcZUgqthk4IK3NOypVw?e=Z6G1qp
npm run start:web -- --document https://contoso-my.sharepoint-df.com/:t:/p/user/EQda453DNTpFnl1bFPhOVR0BwlrzetbXvnaRYii2lDr_oQ?e=RSccmNP

Also, take a look at Debug add-ins on Linux.