Spread: Using Excel 2007 Features on Client's machine.

Spread 8 has introduced support to work with Excel 2007 which is not possible with earlier versions of Spread COM. This feature was added to Spread COM in 2010. There have been some customers facing issues using Spread 8 COM with Excel 2007 on client's machine i.e. after deployment. There are certain points that we need to keep in mind while deploying our application. In this blog, I would summarize the process of getting things work correctly on client's machine when we deploy our application using Spread and Excel 2007.

1. Make sure that you have added FARPOINT.SPREAD8.EXCEL2007.DLL in your application so that it gets installed on client's machine.
2. As there are different builds of Spread 8 you need to make sure that you are using the same build for Spread 8 and FARPOINT.SPREAD8.EXCEL2007.DLL.
3. You should have Microsoft .Net framework installed on client's machine. As this Spread excel dll is written in COM, you need to register this assembly for .Net framework for COM visibility with our ActiveX control.
4. You may use the Microsoft Assembly Registration tool (Regasm.exe) to register FARPOINT.SPREAD8.EXCEL2007.DLL. This is the most crucial point as you may not find this documented. Regasm.exe is used to creates.reg files for FARPOINT.SPREAD8U.EXCEL2007.DLL so that it can be used by your setup program containing Spread. You may find this tool under C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727(on an XP / Windows 7 machine).
5. To make registry entries you may use following command string in command prompt utility "c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\regasm.exe FARPOINT.SPREAD8.EXCEL2007.DLL"(it's the complete path).
6. Another option is to create .reg files which add the necessary registry entries. Using this .reg file, you can simply merge the appropriate .reg file into the registry. You can use the /reg file option to generate a .reg file instead of actually registering the dll that contains the registry entries. To create a .reg file you can change the above command as follows: "c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\regasm.exe/reg file FARPOINT.SPREAD8.EXCEL2007.DLL"(it's complete path).
7. You may also do this through Visual Studio. Open Visual Studio command prompt and use the same command as above.

And this is it. After following all these steps you should be able to use Excel 2007 functionality with Spread 8 on end user's machine.