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Matheen
Contributor
Contributor

Will thinapped addins or plugin work with locally installed office

Hi all

I wanted to know If it is possible to add or deploy thinapped addins to a locally installed office? For example office 2007 is installed natively and there is an office 2007 addin called ‘Save as PDF’ which is Thinapped. So if we execute this thinapped addin, will it attach itself with the natively installed office and work? (assuming we have the merged isolation mode set on the thinapp addin package) ?

If it will work, can someone quickly brief through the steps please?

Regards

Matheen

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pbjork
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Well, this is possible but does need some tweaking. First, in order for a locally installed application to fully see and be able to integrate with a ThinApped application will you have to load it into the same virtual environment as the packaged add-on is in. This is not always true but often. Some integration happen with the help of things we register with the help of thinreg.exe and if that is the case will you not have to launch the locally installed application within the virtual environment.

In your case does it sounds like you will have to come up with a method of ensuring the locally installed application is launched within the virtual environment of your add-on. Easiest done is to simply create an Entry Point within the add-on package.ini targeting the locally installed application.

Example Entry Point (will load local present IE into the bubble):

[iexplore.exe]

Source=%ProgramFilesDir%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

Shortcut=NameOfYourDataContainer.exe

Some times when it’s an Excel add-on do you have a .xla file which is acting as the front end for the add-on. If that is the case are you fortune and then you simply include the .xla in your project and create an Entry Point similar to this one:

[ExcelAddOnName.exe]

Source=%ProgramFilesDir%\ExcelAddOn\FileName.xla

Shortcut=NameOfYourDataContainer.exe

Icon=PointingToANiceIcon.ICO

This will launch Excel (since it is handling .xla) within the virtualized environment and will see the add-on.

Some more info that will hopefully aid you:

http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2010/02/data-containers-entry-points-and-dats---oh-my.html

http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2011/01/locally-installed-applications-and-integration-with-virtuali...

Just a side note, I hope the PDF converter do not use a Print Driver since we cannot virtualize device drivers..

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