Office Primary Interop Assemblies

Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System

When you create a new Visual Studio Tools for Office project, a reference to the correct primary interop assembly (PIA) is added to your project automatically if the assembly is installed in the Windows global assembly cache (GAC). The Microsoft Office primary interop assemblies are installed in the global assembly cache during a Complete installation.

For more information about primary interop assemblies, see Primary Interop Assemblies and the MSDN article "Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs)" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/whypriinterop.asp).

Applications That Do Not Have Projects in Visual Studio Tools for Office

For Microsoft Office applications that do not have projects in Visual Studio Tools for Office, you must add a reference to the appropriate application or component to your project manually. Adding a reference to the component references the primary interop assembly, if the assembly is installed in the global assembly cache. Office applications and components are accessible from the COM tab of the Add Reference dialog box.

If the primary interop assembly is not installed in the global assembly cache, Visual Studio generates an interop assembly for the project that might not work fully in all cases. For more information, see Troubleshooting in Office at Run Time.

Note
Some assemblies are added to a project automatically when an assembly that references them is added. For example, references to the assemblies Office.dll and Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll are added automatically when you add a reference to the Word, Excel, Outlook, Microsoft Forms, or Graph assemblies.

For more information about installing Office primary interop assemblies, see How to: Install Office Primary Interop Assemblies. For more information about adding references, see How to: Add and Remove References in Visual Studio (C#, J#).

Available Assemblies for Microsoft Office 2003

The following table shows primary interop assemblies that are available to install with Microsoft Office 2003.

Office Application or Component	Primary Interop Assembly Name
Microsoft Access 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.dll
Microsoft Excel 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll
Microsoft FrontPage 6.0 Web Object Reference Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Frontpage.dll
Microsoft FrontPage 6.0 Page Object Reference Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Frontpageeditor.dll
Microsoft Graph 11.0 Object Library (used by PowerPoint, Access, and Word for graphs)	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Graph.dll
Microsoft Outlook 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll
Microsoft Outlook View Control (can be used in Web pages and applications to access your Inbox)	Microsoft.Office.Interop.OutlookViewCtl.dll
Microsoft Office Web Components 11.0 (spreadsheet, graph, and pivot table for Web pages)	Microsoft.Office.Interop.owc11.dll
Microsoft PowerPoint 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.dll
Microsoft Publisher 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.dll
Microsoft Smart Tags 2.0 Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.SmartTag.dll
Microsoft Word 11.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility 5.3	Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll
Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library (programmable controls that can be used in applications)	Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.Forms.dll
Microsoft Office 11.0 Object Library (Office shared functionality)	office.dll

Available Assemblies for the 2007 Microsoft Office System

The following table shows primary interop assemblies that are available to install with the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Office Application or Component	Primary Interop Assembly Name
Microsoft Access 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.dll
Microsoft Office 2007 Access database engine Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.Dao.dll
Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll
Microsoft Graph 12.0 Object Library (used by PowerPoint, Access, and Word for graphs)	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Graph.dll
Microsoft InfoPath 2.0 Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.dll
Microsoft InfoPath XML Interop Assembly	Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.Xml.dll
Microsoft Outlook 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll
Microsoft Office Outlook View Control (can be used in Web pages and applications to access your Inbox)	Microsoft.Office.Interop.OutlookViewCtl.dll
Microsoft PowerPoint 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.dll
Microsoft Publisher 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.dll
Microsoft SharePointDesigner 12.0 Web Object Reference Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.SharePointDesigner.dll
Microsoft SharePointDesigner 12.0 Page Object Reference Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.SharePointDesignerPage.dll
Microsoft Smart Tags 2.0 Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.SmartTag.dll
Microsoft Visio 12.0 Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Visio.dll
Microsoft Visio 12.0 Save As Web Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Visio.SaveAsWeb.dll
Microsoft Visio 12.0 Drawing Control Type Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.VisOcx.dll
Microsoft Word 12.0 Object Library	Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility 5.3	Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll
Microsoft Office 12.0 Object Library (Office shared functionality)	office.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Access Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Excel Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Graph Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Graph.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft InfoPath Type Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft InfoPath XML Interop Assembly	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.Xml.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Outlook Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Outlook View Control	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.OutlookViewCtl.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft PowerPoint Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Publisher Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Smart Tags Type Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.SmartTag.dll
Microsoft Visio Type Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Visio.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Visio Save As Web Type Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Visio.SaveAsWeb.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Visio Drawing Control Type Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.VisOcx.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Word Object Library	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility 5.3	Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll
Binding Redirect Assembly for Microsoft Office Object Library	Policy.11.0.office.dll

Note
The binding redirect assemblies help make sure that the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the primary interop assemblies are loaded at run time. When a Visual Studio Tools for Office solution that references a Microsoft Office 2003 primary interop assembly runs on a computer that has the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the same primary interop assembly, the binding redirect assembly instructs the .NET Framework runtime to load the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the primary interop assembly. For more information, see Assembly Binding Redirection.

Note

The binding redirect assemblies help make sure that the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the primary interop assemblies are loaded at run time. When a Visual Studio Tools for Office solution that references a Microsoft Office 2003 primary interop assembly runs on a computer that has the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the same primary interop assembly, the binding redirect assembly instructs the .NET Framework runtime to load the 2007 Microsoft Office version of the primary interop assembly. For more information, see Assembly Binding Redirection.

Tasks

How to: Target Office Applications Through Primary Interop Assemblies

Other Resources

General Reference (Visual Studio Tools for Office)