Office click-ro-run and OLE automation

Hi,

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Thank you.

According to this post a few years ago http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3372394/is-it-possible-to-automate-a-click-to-run-application, Office installed via click-to-run does not support ole automation.

Now a few years have passed, I wonder if Office 2016/Office 365 installed via click-to-run now supports OLE-Automation.

One of our software failed with click-to-run installed office. Process Monitor suggest that it is looking for HKCR\Typelib\{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52}\2.8\0\win32 in the registry and failed to find mso.dll. Office itself found in registry HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\TypeLib\{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52}\2.8\0\win32\(Default). Maybe a traditional OLE automation client does not know the new location?

I have found the solution myself. With click-to-run, Office installation does not register typelibs in HKCR\Typelib. Instead, it registers typelibs in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\TypeLib. VBAs running in Office is aware of the location and runs fine. External application is not aware of the location. So the solution is to run regtlib.exe on mso.dll to register Office typelibs in HKCR\Typelib so that external applications can run OLE Automation correctly.