calling a .NET Library from Excel

Getting Intellisense Working in Excel

 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
 
namespace DotNetLibrary
{
    [ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.AutoDual)]
    public class DotNetClass
    {
        public DotNetClass()
        {
        }
        public string DotNetMethod(string input)
        {
            return "Hello " + input;
        }
    }
}

 

 

 

Possible Problem with these Examples

One problem we have had with these examples is that Excel can get confused about which version of the .NET Framework to load if you have more than one version installed. If this happens you will get an automation error when you try to instantiate .NET objects at runtime from Excel. The .NET types will appear correctly in the Excel object browser.

The workaround for this is to tell Excel explicitly that the version of the .NET Framework that you are using is supported. To do this create a text file called Excel.exe.config and put it in the same directory as Excel.exe itself. The file should contain the text below (with the version number replaced with the .NET Framework version you are using):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <startup>
    <supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727"/>
  </startup>
</configuration>