On my development system, I am running Office 2007, and previously had Office 2003 installed, and thus have the Microsoft Office 11.0 and 12.0 Object Models available. Our production environment is in the process of being upgraded to Office 2007, but it hasn't happened yet - still running Office XP in production, and I need to be able to debug an (inherited) VB.Net (VS 2005) app that uses Office Interop against Office XP (10.0) (Excel).
Can I simply download, install, and reference the Office XP PIA's (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C41BD61E-3060-4F71-A6B4-01FEBA508E52) in order to compile an run the app? A previous build has been tested against Office 2007 and it seemed to work with the "old" interop/PIAs.
I have the "old" Interop.Excel, etc., the only reference that is giving me a problem is the Microsoft Office 10.0 Object Model (which says Microsoft Office 12.0 Object Model but has an Exclamation mark in my IDE).
I also found http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/Compile2003VstoVista2007.aspx (for Office 2003 on a system with 2007) which suggests installing the older version of Office and then massaging the project files in a text editor. While I don't mind using a text editor on the project files, I'd prefer not to install Office XP unless I have to (I have access to it if I do). And I'd prefer to be able to load the project as is (with the "old" reference).