Can Microsoft.office.interop.word.dll work without installing office?

Question

My ASP.Net-C# application works with mailmerge and the dll by name Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll V14.0.0.0. All is well on my desktop (where office is installed). However when this application is deployed on the production machine, the following error is thrown:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040154): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)).

When the class is registered, the following error is found:

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll was loaded but the entry-point DLLRegisterServer was not found. Make sure, this is a valid dll or OCX and try again.

How do I fix this problem? Office suite can't be installed on the production machine.

Solution

No, the Interop libraries are just a shell over the real Office library code. Thus you need to have Office installed where your app is running

Also I totally agree with the comment above from John Saunders. You really should avoid to use these wrappers on a server application.

Comments

[wgraham]

Office is required to be installed if using Interop. What are you trying to do?

[John Saunders]

It is a horrible idea to use Office Interop from ASP.NET or another server technology. These APIs were written for use in a desktop application, for automating Office (a suite of desktop applications). Server applications are different in many ways that make it a very, very bad idea to use Office Interop in them. It's also unsupported by Microsoft, and may violate your Office license. See Considerations for server-side Automation of Office