C# VSTO Outlook 2007: <dll> is not a valid Office Add-in - c#

Hi i am developing Outlook 2007 Add-in in Visual Studio 2008. When I press F5 in VS editor, Outlook is normally opened with my plugin.
But if I want to add plugin manually from Outlook (Tools -> Trust center -> Add Ins...) and select my plugin from build path ....\bin\Release\plugin.dll
This messagebox is shown: "....\bin\Release\plugin.dll" is not a valid Office Add-in.
I have NOT this plugin in disabled items. (Help -> Disabled Items)
I searched many threads on internet with same problem but no soulution. :-(

Never add your add-in manually via that dialog - it's completely useless. Add-ins need to be properly registered with Windows Installer packages (or when debugging in Visual Studio) to be loaded properly.

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Create MSI for Office Outlook Add-In with visual studio

I have create a c# application with a windows service and 2 vsto projects. Once the MSI has been created/installed i can see the one add-in was installed and the service is deployed as well. My problem comes in where only one of the vsto projects is installed. The one that is giving me nightmares is a Outlook visual designer ribbon. The other vsto project is a non visual add-in, and that one installs just fine. For the life of me i can't figure out why the visual designer is not installing, it is not in outlook options and not in control panel/add remove either. Compiling it from Visual studio everything works fine and runs as it should. Does anyone maybe have an idea of what could be wrong? Thanks in advance.
If you don't see your add-in listed on the COM add-ins dialog the required windows registry keys were not added properly. See Registry Entries for Application-Level Add-Ins for more information.
Make sure that you did all the necessary steps described in the Deploying an Office Solution by Using Windows Installer article.

Publishing and installing an Outlook 2003 Add-In

I have a solution with 5 projects in it, one of which is a Windows Form Project. They all are part of the Outlook Add-In. I tried publishing the 5 projects and installing them, which seems to work fine. The only problem is, after installing I see the entry in the Start Menu but only for the Windows Forms project. When I start it, the Form is displayed but not Outlook.
Also, if I open Outlook and look into COM-Addins, I don't see my Addin. How can I publish/install my Addin so it will load automatically when Outlook starts?
Did you create an Outlook 2003 VSTO project? Are your registry entries deployed and is LoadBehavior set to 3?
Deploying Application-Level Add-Ins (2003 System)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms269007.aspx

Distributing Outlook Add-In from Visual Studio 2012

I've written an Outlook add-in for our office that I'd like to make available to others for testing.
My Googling has indicated that I should make an InstallShield project in the solution and use that, however my Visual Studio install only opens an InstallShield download page for which there is a dead link.
Following this failure, I attempted to manually add the add-in to Outlook by utilizing the files in the bin directory, but it tells me that it is an invalid add-in.
I'm at a bit of a loss here on how to proceed in making this add-in available for distribution.
You could use click-once, right click the outlook project in solution explorer and select publish and follow the wizard. The only problem would be that you will need to sign the click-once app because office addins are particular about security.
This question has further details.

Deploy Outlook 2010 Addin setup

I have developed an Outlook 2010 addin using Visual Studio 2010. When debugging/running from Visual Studio, everything works just fine. However, I am trying to make a setup so other users can simply install the addin. When running the setup on other computers, however, everything seems to work just fine, but the addin is not added to Microsoft Outlook.
By the way: even when running the setup on my computer (after having removed the addin that has been automatically added due to Visual Studio running), the addin is not added to MS Outlook. The addin project is referenced in the setup project that I build.
What could possibly be wrong?
Have you tried entering to outlook File -> Options -> Add-ins and check in the list if you app is registered and/or activated?

How to show the Outlook addin only after installation

I have developed a Outlook Addin using VSTO in Visual Studio 2010, on Windows XP/SP 3.
Build the VSTO solution, and I open Outlook 2010.
I see that the Add in has been installed. ( which is strange ).
Shut down Outlook.
Clean the VSTO solution 5) Open Outlook 2010, the add in is not
there.
So I believe Outlook understands that an Outlook add in is there, but I dont want the mentioned behaviour.
What am I looking for :-
I have created the installer using ClickOnce .
I should only see the Outlook addin , once I have executed the installer.
Any ideas shall be helpful.
When you build a VSTO addin, it gets automatically installed on your development machine. It is Visual Studio that is doing this for you, to make debugging easyer.
You can probably uninstall your addin automatically by using post-build events, but "Clean project" may be just as easy.

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