How to test Office Add-ins in the online version of Word and excel?

Question

I am developing an Task Pane Office Add-in using the Office JavaScript APIs in Visual Studio. When you run the application it runs in the desktop client version of Office.

The Office Store requirements states

Your Add-in for Office must be fully functional with the supported operating systems, browsers, and devices for Office 2013 and Office Online.

So I need to test it in the Office online versions too.

The problem is I am unable to find a way to load the application in Word/Excel/Powerpoint Online and test it and I also dosen't have a SharePoint setup where I can publish the app test it and then submit it the app store.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

There is now a new way to test add-ins in the online Office clients. You can directly side-load your add-ins by loading your manifest file into your browser storage. This is achieved by going to Insert > Office Add-ins and then selecting Manage My Add-ins > Upload My Add-in (on the My Add-ins tab in the upper-right corner of the dialog).

Keep in mind this won't be as seamless as using an Office 365 Developer site or developer tenant with access to the app catalog if you are using Visual Studio to do a one-click deploy + test, because currently Visual Studio doesn't utilize this side-loading feature. But if you don't use Visual Studio or don't want to use a dev site/tenant, this is an easy way to test your add-ins in Office Online.

Try it out and let me know what you think of this feature!

Answer 2

To echo Massimo's answer above: Creating the O365 Dev Site is the easiest way to go. And, assuming you're using Visual Studio, the "Start Action" property will deploy the app for you into an Excel Online document (it's somewhat hidden, but super super handy!) You should even be able to hit breakpoints, if you set Internet Explorer in the "Start Action"!

For Word & PowerPoint online, or if you're not using VS, see Debug add-ins in Office Online

Note: If you're following the article above, a few clarifications regarding the localhost URL (step #2): For those who are using Visual Studio, rather than editing the XML manually, you can instead use the "publishing" functionality to get a ready-to-upload manifest. To do this:

1. Right-click on the project containing the manifest and choose "Publish"
2. Under Profile's "current profile", choose "Create new profile" and give it a name like "local publish"
3. Choose "package the app" button (skipping over the "deploy your web project" button, if you just want to test against a local machine), and enter the URL of your localhost deployment (e.g., something like "https://localhost:44300"). Click "finish", wait a few seconds, and a published copy of your manifest will appear in Windows Explorer.

To find out the URL that VS uses for locally running the add-in, the easiest way is via the Properties pane of the web project, looking at the SSL URL property

Continue following the article for the rest of the steps (and of course, make sure that the add-in is F5-ed from VS when you try out the add-in from Office online, to make sure that your site is running on localhost). Or use the same procedure as above, but slightly modified, to first publish to a free azure website, and point to that, instead.

Answer 3

You can create a free 30 day trial tenant for Office 365 for testing. You'll be able to publish the Add-in, and test with an account of that tenant.
Set up a development environment for SharePoint Add-ins on Office 365

There's also the option to join Office 365 Developer Subscription program (free), and get a 1 year long trial.
http://dev.office.com/devprogram

For debugging using the Online client, you'll have to change Start Action property for your project accordingly.

Create and debug Office Add-ins in Visual Studio