TFS & Visual Studio ALM – by Neno Loje

The Problem

A project that references Office interop assemblies (Microsoft.Office.Interop) fails to compile on TF Build (or VSO’s Elastic Build Service).

The error message might be similar to this one:

The type or namespace name ‘Office’ does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft’ (are you missing an assembly reference?)

The Solution (based on this forum post)

You want to check-in the interop assemblies.

1. Create a “Lib” folder and add all relevant assemblies, like:
   • Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll
   • Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll
   • Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll
   • OFFICE.DLL
2. Removed the references to your Office interop assemblies and add references to the assemblies in your libs folder.

–Neno