• Hi All

    Please note that at the Chandoo.org Forums there is Zero Tolerance to Spam

    Post Spam and you Will Be Deleted as a User

    Hui...

  • When starting a new post, to receive a quicker and more targeted answer, Please include a sample file in the initial post.

Excel Add-In Installer

Ehtisham Ali

Ehtisham Ali

Member
Hi,

I have coded a function and saved it as addin(.xlam). Now I want to distribute it to my huge team. Please suggest how can I make a simple wizard based setup package or one of a kind. I like somthing simpler with few or no options somewhat like microsoft provides to install their addins.


Regards
Ali
 
Thanks Narayan

That is exactly what I want, but it requires VS 2012 and I dont have a licence for that in my Office.

Is their any other solution through VBA itself.

Regards
Ali
 
As Narayan indicated with the Excel Guru link, ideally you would want to save the add-in onto a network share and let the users use it from there. When they install the add-in make sure that they do not choose to copy the add-in locally. If you wanted to you could give them a little VBA code to install the add-in to guarantee it isn't copied locally, but I just tend to educate them.

The point of all of this is to ensure there's only 1 copy of the add-in used by everyone: this means that when you want to update the file you can just deploy the new version onto the network share and everyone will immediately get the update (they will need to close/reopen their Excel sessions or re-install it). If users have their own local copy then deployment, support and updating becomes a bit more complicated.

Finally, once you've put the add-in on the network share, a great tip is to make sure that you mark it as read-only: this means that no one will lock the file when they install it and prevent you from updating it. Whether or not you decide to deploy the add-in manually or using code is totally up to you.
 
Thanks a lot Colin for your network share idea.

I have done the same and also coded the deployment module which I gave them all.


Again a great thanks to all.

Regards
Ali
 
Hello,

I am facing the same "problem". I have several excel tools, and they share a lot of common function. Currently, these functions are in each workbook, in a specific module called 'Toolbox'... But each modification need to modify all workbook. Classic...
So now,I want to put them in an xlam addin.

If you are using a single addin in a network share (so not a local copy on user's PC), this means your excel file will not work offline, right ? This could be a problem for me.

So if I want to be able to execute the excel files offline, the solution is to copy the addin locally? I could do this based on a version system I guess :
I have my (last version) xlam on a network share. When a user open the Excel file, the system check the local version of the addin, compared to the official version on the network share (if network is offline, the check stops). If version is #, the last version is downloaded on the local computer and replace the previous one ? Do you think there is some issue with this idea ?
Thank you
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top