Office Addin Sideloader

A handy tool to manage your office addins locally, you can use it for addin development or deploy your addins for your clients out of AppSource.

NOTE: currently only support windows.

Features

• Add or remove Office Add-in locally.
• Support local or url manifest source.
• Debug sideload status and list manifest info.
• Single binary without any dependency.
• Use it as a library.
• Generate add-in installer/uninstaller with sentry support by single command.
• Support fixing add-in APP ERROR and clearing cache.

Installation

Pre-built releases

If you just use the command line and don't have a python environment, download pre-built binary from GitHub Releases.

Pypi

> pip install oaloader

Quick Start

> ./oaloader.exe --help
Usage:  [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Manage your office addins locally.

Options:
  --version         Show the version and exit.
  -l, --level TEXT  The log level  [default: info]
  --help            Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  add     Register catalog and add manifests, manifests can be file paths
          or...

  fix     Try fixing `APP ERROR` when starting up add-ins.
  info    Debug sideload status.
  remove  Remove manifest from catalog and manifest can be a file path or...

Build an Addin installer

1. Install Poetry.
2. Run poetry install to prepare environment.
3. Checkout Nuitka Requirements and install a C compiler.
4. Run poetry run invoke installer -m <YOUR-ADDIN-MANIFEST-URL> to build your own installer.

If your want customize the installer, just edit installer.jinja2 or write your own installer with oaloader module.

Build an Addin uninstaller

Just using invoke uninstaller task like installer above.

FAQ

How it works?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/testing/create-a-network-shared-folder-catalog-for-task-pane-and-content-add-ins

Get error like ImportError: DLL load failed while importing win32xxx when import pywin32 module.

Try this solution:

1. Open a terminal as Administrator
2. Get your virtualenv path by running poetry env info
3. Run poetry run python <virtualenv path>/.venv/Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install

see https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/issues/1431#issuecomment-548584385 for more details.