I have some visio .VSL add ons that I used many years ago that I want to load into my new Visio 2013 Standard. The add-in dialog will only look for COM add-ins. Is there a way to use .VSL add-ins?

You could create a .msi installer to tell Visio about them, or,

menu File -> Options -> Advanced -> File Locations

and put the address of addons into the Addons path.

Hi Max Entropy,

Please try this method:

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1. You have already figured the first one out. Copy your DLL to Visio directory "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15" or to "C:\Windows\SysWOW64".

2. Add a manifest to your VSL in project.

If you are using Visual Studio:

- Create file named "Visio2013.manifest" and put it to project directory.
The content should be: (change to your VSL/DLL names, add more entries if you have more than one dependent dll)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
    <file name="YourAddon.vsl"/>
    <file name="YouDependent.dll"/>
</assembly>

The main idea is to tell windows loader that all thse files are in one "assembly".

Now go to project settings -> Configuration Properties -> Manifest Tool -> Additional Manifest Files.
Put "Visio2013.manifest" in this field.

Build/Run

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Regards,

George Zhao
TechNet Community Support