Outlook addin not loading up on Win10 Office2016

Question

I know that there are multiple posts, blogs etc related to same issue but none of them helped me thus I'm posting this question here for some expert opinion.

Environment: Windows 10, Office 2016, .Net Framework 4.5.1, Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office runtime

My outlook addin works perfectly fine on Win7, Win8.1, Outlook 2013, 2016.

Issue: Outlook add-in is not loading up on outlook startup, I see that LoadBehaviour is changing from 3 to 2. When I double-click and install the .vsto file from the installed location that time add-in is installed successfully but still the add-in is not loaded up during outlook startup.

I have followed all the steps provided by Hamed Ahmadi in his blog . But none of them helped.

Fusion logs:

The operation was successful.
Bind result: hr = 0x0. The operation completed successfully.

Assembly manager loaded from:  C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\clr.dll
Running under executable  C:\Windows\syswow64\MsiExec.exe
--- A detailed error log follows. 

=== Pre-bind state information ===
LOG: Where-ref bind. Location = C:\Program Files (x86)\myaddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin.dll
LOG: Appbase = file:///C:/Windows/syswow64/
LOG: Initial PrivatePath = NULL
LOG: Dynamic Base = NULL
LOG: Cache Base = NULL
LOG: AppName = MsiExec.exe
Calling assembly : (Unknown).
===
LOG: This bind starts in LoadFrom load context.
WRN: Native image will not be probed in LoadFrom context. Native image will only be probed in default load context, like with Assembly.Load().
LOG: No application configuration file found.
LOG: Using host configuration file: C:\Users\anupraj\AppData\Local\Temp\CFG1405.tmp
LOG: Using machine configuration file from C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\config\machine.config.
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///C:/Program Files (x86)/myaddin/myaddin.OutlookAddin/myaddin.OutlookAddin.dll.
LOG: Assembly download was successful. Attempting setup of file: C:\Program Files (x86)\myaddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin.dll
LOG: Entering run-from-source setup phase.
LOG: Assembly Name is: myaddin.OutlookAddin, Version=1.0.4.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=08126df2ce1c130e
LOG: Re-apply policy for where-ref bind.
LOG: Post-policy reference: myaddin.OutlookAddin, Version=1.0.4.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=08126df2ce1c130e
LOG: GAC Lookup was unsuccessful.
LOG: Where-ref bind Codebase does not match what is found in default context. Keep the result in LoadFrom context.
LOG: Binding succeeds. Returns assembly from C:\Program Files (x86)\myaddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin\myaddin.OutlookAddin.dll.
LOG: Assembly is loaded in LoadFrom load context.

I'm not that used to reading fusion logs thus unable to deduct what it is saying.

I tired AddinSpy by using this Github Code , but for my add-in i get this exception.

System.ArgumentException: Destination array is not long enough to copy all the items in the collection. Check array index and length.
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource)
   at System.BitConverter.ToInt32(Byte[] value, Int32 startIndex)
   at AddInSpy.ILReader.Next() in e:\POC\AddInSpy-master\AddInScanEngine\ILReader.cs:line 79
   at AddInSpy.ILReader.<GetEnumerator>d__0.MoveNext() in e:\POC\AddInSpy-master\AddInScanEngine\ILReader.cs:line 51
   at AddInSpy.AssemblyScanner.CheckCustomTaskPaneType(Assembly assembly, ArrayList& assemblyInfo) in e:\POC\AddInSpy-master\AddInScanEngine\AssemblyScanner.cs:line 251

Note: When I try to run the add-in code from visual studio on this Win10 Office 2016 environment, the add-in is loading up properly, no issues there.

I'm using .msi to deploy my add-in and I have had it tested on Win7, Win8.1 and its working fine on these environments.

Any clue what might be going wrong ?

Answer 1

Finally, I was able to solve my issue.

Problem was with the registry entry which I had in the Visual Studio Installer project.

I was using [INSTALLDIR]PhishLabs.OutlookAddin.vsto|vstolocal which worked perfectly fine in Win7, Win8.1 deployments but in Win10 it was failing.

I had replaced INSTALLDIR with TARGETDIR which is working fine now on Win10.

[TARGETDIR]PhishLabs.OutlookAddin.vsto|vstolocal is what you need.