How to determine Office version

[Guest]

Hello,
Does anyone know how to programmatically determine the version of Office
that is installed during an installation? That is, I will probably need to
check via a registry entry if possible. If not, if I had to check one of the
Office exe for version but registry is preferred. I couldn't find any MSDN
and KB articles on such. I am trying to determine where the Office templates
folder going by the version of Office.
Thanks, God bless
Van

 

[RWN]

"Application.Version"

 

[Guest]

Rob,
Thanks for your reply.
However, as mentioned, I need to determine the version during the
installation via my Wise installer. That is why I was wondering if there were
a registry entry that reveals that. Else there is a method in the Installer I
can use to determine the file version of an Office exe.
Thanks, God bless
Van

 

[Cherian D via OfficeKB.com]

There are registry entries to determine the Office version. I use it in my
Installshield script. The entries are dependent on Office version 9, 10,
11, etc.

The key are:
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\ProductVersion
Sub-Key: LastProduct

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\ProductVersion
Sub-Key: LastProduct

For versions earlier than 10, MS does not put the ProductVersion key, in
such case, I check for the Excel key\InstallRoot and if I find it, I know
that Excel is installed. (In my case, I know that the user have to install
Excel, so my checking for Excel is valid)

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Rob,
Thanks for your reply.
However, as mentioned, I need to determine the version during the
installation via my Wise installer. That is why I was wondering if there were
a registry entry that reveals that. Else there is a method in the Installer I
can use to determine the file version of an Office exe.
Thanks, God bless
Van

I'm pretty sure you can create a reference to Excel and call
Application.Version from within your installer. That's what we did in my
last job althofúgh we used InstallShield.

/Fredrik

 

[Guest]

Hi Cherian,
Thanks for your input.
I tried those entries but I found a problem. I previously had Office XP
installed, then uninstalled, and now have Office 2003. But the registry
entries you gave show both of them installed, even though only the later
version is. Don't know if you came across this issue, or found a workaround.
However, I found that I could access a given Application entry under the
HKCR section of the registry. EG:
HKCR\Excel.Application\CurVer
I found this worked even for an older Office 97 version. Same for Word, etc.
Thanks again, God bless
Van