R – Can VSTO projects built using, for example, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel be run on machines without Office installed

excelnetoffice-interopvsto

We're currently using a thing from SoftArtisans to generate Excel spreadsheets from data the mainframe FTPs down to our document server.

The doc server has the .Net frameworks through 3.5 on it, as does my development box. The difference is my machine has Office 2007 as well.

So, I built a service this morning with a filewatcher using Interop.Excel to make the spreadsheets without the need for the SoftArtisans piece.

When I install and run on the document server, the app chokes when I drop a file in for conversion, saying "Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel, Version=12.0.0.0"

Is there no redistributable package or something I can use? Management doesn't want Office installed on the server.

Best Answer

As far as I know, the only way to use the Office Interop assemblies, is to have full office client installed on the server.