Programatically Install Microsoft Access Add-In Using VBA

Question

Finding information on Add-In development for Microsoft Access is like getting all of your teeth pulled! Yes I've found the couple Managed Add-In Articles written... but could find next to nothing for Un-Managed Add-Ins. I did find one great article which is very old in creating basically an unmanaged .mda project... which I've followed and created a add-in. Now I would like an automated way to deploy this add-in.

I've seen it done from VBA with such tools as Rick Fisher's Find and Replace add-in tool... but can not find a way to do this programatically in Access. I have found lot's and lot's of articles on Excel Add-In's and even Excel Add-In Installation. One such method uses VBA like so:

Sub InstallAddIn()
    Dim AI As Excel.AddIn
    Set AI = Application.AddIns.Add(Filename:="C:\MyAddIn.xla")
    AI.Installed = True 
End Sub

Unfortunately Access does not use the same method. If anyone could point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it. AND if anyone knows of any books or references that goes more in-depth to developing Add-Ins for Microsoft Access that would be greatly appreciated as well as most of the picking seem slim.

Answer 1

This is just a bad idea. To be honest, I'm not sure where it's even located in the current version of Windows/Office. I have found Word and Excel at the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office, but I have Access installed and I don't see an Access folder there. At one point, Access add-ins were accessible through this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Menu Add-Ins

This worked for Office 2003 on Win Vista. But it changes every time Microsoft updates Office/Windows, so trying to do it programmatically would be moot because you would have to update and roll out a database change every time you updated Office or Windows.