Installer for Microsoft Office Add In

Question

I am working on a Microsoft Office Add In.

The current installer uses NSIS, but does not provide automatic updates.

I would like to provide either optional or mandatory updates in the most user friendly manner possible. It must work for all versions of Office.

What is the standard/ best way of doing this please?

My research so far has not provided a stand-out option. Best articles I've found listed below:

• Article from Scott Hanselmann
• VSTO
• Click Once , though some people seem against it, I'm not sure why?
• NSIS auto updating here and here - not sure if we can get the optional/mandatory option here easily.
• Chocolatey - would prefer to keep everything under my control, so not really an option.

Any pointers much appreciated.

UPDATE - Following the answer, some more references for anyone searching.

• Some downsides with clickonce - most of which shouldn't be a problem for me.
• Deploying clickonce on amazon .
• Difference between clickonce and standard installer.
• Clickonce signing here and here .

UPDATE 2: Further to this - Although I like ClickOnce on WPF applications, updates were troublesome when used for an Office Add in. We ended up creating our own.

Answer 1

You need to use ClickOnce if you want to implement the auto-update feature. All other ways require to uninstall the add-in first and only then you can install a new version of the software.

The Deploying an Office Solution by Using ClickOnce article describes the required steps in depth for creating ClickOnce installers.