From: Sin Jeong-hun on
Hello.

I created an application that automates Excel. It looked like that if
the dll "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll" was not with my exe, the
application crashes on other PC's. Since my application doesn't
provide a set-up program (X-copy application), I would like to zip
that file with my application. Is that permitted? I tried to research
on my own but I couldn't find the answer. I even consult the lawyer in
our company but he was not able to give me a clear answer.

By the way, that dll came with Visual Studio 2010 (located at C:
\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Visual Studio Tools
for Office\PIA\Office14).
From: Peter Duniho on
Sin Jeong-hun wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I created an application that automates Excel. It looked like that if
> the dll "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll" was not with my exe, the
> application crashes on other PC's. Since my application doesn't
> provide a set-up program (X-copy application), I would like to zip
> that file with my application. Is that permitted? I tried to research
> on my own but I couldn't find the answer. I even consult the lawyer in
> our company but he was not able to give me a clear answer.
>
> By the way, that dll came with Visual Studio 2010 (located at C:
> \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Visual Studio Tools
> for Office\PIA\Office14).

There is no one here who can provide legal advice to you. However, I
would say that in general, if a DLL does not include a license that
clearly states you _may_ redistribute it, then you probably may not. I
doubt that the Office interop DLL is redistributable.

But, I also believe it should come with Office (or at least any version
of Office it supports). So if you don't have the interop DLL installed,
it's either because you also don't have a support version of Office
installed, or for some reason you failed to install the interop DLL with
Office.

I'm not even sure the latter is possible; I don't recall an option in
the Office install that allows you to exclude the interop DLL. But
either way, it seems to me that the correct solution is simply to ensure
that the correct version of Office has been installed and that the
interop DLL has been installed along with it.

Pete