Supporting Office 2003 from .NET: getting the Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/02/22
Often you work with projects not having the latest stuff.
Sometimes that is a good thing: latest stuff is not always best :-)
In this case, the client had Office 2003, and needed to do some Excel automation from .NET.
The development systems however had Office 2007 on it, so importing Excel defaults to the Office 2007 Primary Interop Assembly: Office version 12 in stead of 11.Installing Office 2003 was not an option, so the Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies were needed.
MSDN explains nicely how to install the Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies, and directs to the updated download page of the Office 2003 Update: Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies.
There is also a direct download.
Sidenote:
The version numbering of products by various vendors confuses a lot of people, Microsoft Office is no different.
Luckily, there Wikipedia has a History of Office page listing the various internal and external version numbers of Microsoft Office for Windows (Their Microsoft Office pagealso has a section on office version numbers for both Windows and Mac).
Recent Windows Office versions summary:
- Office 2003 is version 11
- Office 2007 is version 12
- Office 2010 is version 14
(that is why people from the USA have a problem reaching the 14th floor in Europe: we do have both a 13th floor, and ground level is called floor zero)
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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