title: How can I solve the 'Required version of MS Office is not installed' error when I try to run an Excel addin from Visual Studio?
body: <p>I have inherited a MS Excel addin project written in VS 2010 and because I have never written a VS addin before, I am somewhat confused as to why I cannot start it from the Visual Studio. </p>
  
  <p>The project compiles without error, but when I attempt to start it, it says 'You cannot debug or run this project, because the required version of the Microsoft Office application is not installed'. I have MS Excel 365 installed and when I download the compiled addin installation pcakage, I can install and run the addin within my Excel alright. </p>
  
  <p>From <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18250511/cannot-debug-or-run-word-addin-because-the-required-version-of-microsoft-office">another question here</a>, I understood that the reason could be that the .csproj file contains a different path to Excel (from the original's author machine) than what it needs to be on my machine.</p>
  
  <p>In my .csproj file, under ProjectExtensions > VisualStudio elements, there's:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;FlavorProperties GUID="{BAA0C2D2-18E2-41B9-852F-F413020CAA33}"&gt;
    &lt;ProjectProperties HostName="Excel" HostPackage="{20A848B8-E01F-4801-962E-25DB0FF57389}" OfficeVersion="14.0" VstxVersion="4.0" ApplicationType="Excel" Language="cs" TemplatesPath="" DebugInfoExeName="#Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\InstallRoot\Path#excel.exe" AddItemTemplatesGuid="{51063C3A-E220-4D12-8922-BDA915ACD783}" /&gt;
    &lt;Host Name="Excel" GeneratedCodeNamespace="ConfigDBaddin" PublishedHash="69C324AB27932AA2FBF2B7EA72250886FF164DE6" IconIndex="0"&gt;
      &lt;HostItem Name="ThisAddIn" Code="ConfigDBAddin.cs" CanonicalName="AddIn" PublishedHash="879FD8B71587DEEC71FFEFE50C6C4996636229AA" CanActivate="false" IconIndex="1" Blueprint="ConfigDBAddin.Designer.xml" GeneratedCode="ConfigDBAddin.Designer.cs" /&gt;
    &lt;/Host&gt;
  &lt;/FlavorProperties&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The registry path <code>Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\InstallRoot\Path#excel.exe</code> doesn't even exist at all on my computer. I have a <code>14.0</code> and <code>15.0</code> sections in the <code>Office</code> section, but none of them contains an <code>Excel</code> section. I assume that I need to change this in the .csproj file to something, but am not sure to what.</p>
  
  <p>What do I have to do to successfully launch the addin from VS?</p>