Deploying Outlook and FrontPage Applications

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

Microsoft® Outlook® and Microsoft® FrontPage® differ from the other Microsoft® Office applications in the way that they store Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) code. Whereas each Microsoft® Excel, Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Access, or Microsoft® PowerPoint® file that you create contains its own VBA project, which is saved with that file, Outlook and FrontPage each provide only a single VBA project where all VBA code is stored and this VBA project is saved as a separate file. For Outlook, this file is named VbaProject.otm; for FrontPage, it is named FrontPage.fpm.

To deploy an Outlook or FrontPage application, you can develop the application locally on your development workstation and then when you distribute the VbaProject.otm or FrontPage.fpm file to users, replace the version of the file on the user's computer. However, each time you or another developer distributes an application in this manner, you'll be replacing the user's existing VbaProject.otm or FrontPage.fpm file, which might very well break existing applications.

A better strategy for building an Outlook or FrontPage application is to create a COM add-in. The COM add-in runs independently of the VBA project and of other COM add-ins, so your application will not affect the user's other applications. For information about creating COM Add-ins, see Add-ins, Templates, Wizards, and Libraries.

See Also

The Packaging Process | Creating a Setup Package Using the Packaging Wizard | Deploying Your Application | Packaging Wizard | Testing Your Setup Package