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How to: Change Deployment Properties and Re-Sign Manifests (2007 System)

  • Article

Applies to

The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office.

Project type

  • Application-level projects

Microsoft Office version

  • 2007 Microsoft Office system

For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

You can make changes to deployment properties in an application manifest for a Visual Studio Tools for Office application-level add-in after the manifests have been generated by the Publish Wizard or the Publish tab of the Project Designer. You can make the following property changes:

  • Changing the description of an Office solution.

  • Changing the name of an Office solution.

  • Changing the load behavior of an application-level add-in.

After you make these changes, you must re-sign both the application manifest and the deployment manifest with a certificate. Use the Manifest Generation and Editing Tool (Mage.exe) to sign the application and deployment manifests.

Changing Deployment Properties

You can change the settings of an Office solution by editing the application manifest, and then re-signing both the application and deployment manifest files. For information about the syntax of application manifests, see Application Manifests for Office Solutions (2007 System).

To change deployment properties

  1. Open the application manifest (.dll.manifest) in a text editor.

  2. Edit the value of the <friendlyname> element to change the add-in name.

    The name of an add-in appears in the list of installed add-ins. For information about the syntax of this element, see <friendlyName> Element (2007 System).

  3. Edit the <description> element to change the add-in description.

    The description of an add-in appears in the list of installed programs. For information about the syntax of this element, see <description> Element (2007 System).

  4. Edit the loadBehavior attribute in the <appAddin> element to change the load behavior.

    The load behavior specifies whether an add-in should be loaded at startup, on demand, or on first startup. For information about the syntax of this element, see <appAddin> Element (2007 System).

Re-signing the Application and Deployment Manifests

This procedure assumes that you have already made changes to your application manifest file (.dll.manifest). This procedure can also be used to delay sign the application and deployment manifests by customers with their own certificate.

To re-sign the application and deployment manifests with Mage.exe

  1. Open a Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt window.

  2. Change directories to the folder that contains the manifest files that you want to sign.

  3. Type the following command to sign the application manifest file. Replace ManifestFileName with the name of your manifest file plus the extension. Replace Certificate with the relative or fully qualified path of the certificate file and replace Password with the password for the certificate.

    mage -sign ManifestFileName.dll.manifest -CertFile Certificate -Password Password

    For example, you could run the following command to sign an application manifest for an add-in named ExcelAddin1. Temporary certificates created by Visual Studio do not have passwords, so these are not recommended for deployment into production environments.

    mage -sign ExcelAddin1.dll.manifest -CertFile ..\ExcelAddIn1_TemporaryKey.pfx

  4. Type the following command to update and sign the deployment manifest file, replacing the placeholder names as in the previous step.

    mage -update ManifestFileName.vsto -appmanifest ManifestFileName.dll.manifest -CertFile Certificate -Password Password

    For example, you could run the following command to sign a deployment manifest for an add-in named ExcelAddin1.

    mage -update ExcelAddin1.vsto -appmanifest ExcelAddin1.dll.manifest -CertFile ..\ExcelAddIn1_TemporaryKey.pfx

See Also

Tasks

How to: Deploy an Office Solution by Using ClickOnce (2007 System)

How to: Install a ClickOnce Office Solution (2007 System)

How to: Deploy a Document-Level Office Solution to a SharePoint Server (2007 System)

How to: Uninstall a ClickOnce Office Solution (2007 System)

Concepts

Deploying Office Solutions (2003 System)

Deploying Office Solutions (2007 System)

Publishing Office Solutions (2007 System)

Customizing Office Solution Installation (2007 System)

Reference

Manifest Generation and Editing Tool (Mage.exe)

Change History

Date

History

Reason

July 2008

Added topic.

SP1 feature change.