Which framework to use for developing Microsoft Office 365 add-in-CodePudding

I am thinking to develop a Microsoft Office 365 Excel Add-in. I am working with Linux as my Operating System.
I came across Visual Studio IDE and Yeoman Generator, but Visual Studio IDE doesn't work with Linux, and Yeoman Generator works but when I do npm start I get a error saying

Error: Unable to start debugging.
Error: Unable to sideload the Office Add-in.
Error: Platform not support Linux.

Do I need to use Windows or MAC only for the development of Microsoft Office Add-in?
Or can I make use of any other framework like electron but I am not able to find much of a documentation on other frameworks.

CodePudding user response：

Because add-ins are developed using HTML and JavaScript, they are designed to work across platforms, but there might be subtle differences in how different browsers render the HTML.

On the Mac OS (but not on Linux) you can use VSCode with yeoman generator to create a skeleton of the Office add-in. Also you may debug add-ins on the Mac OS, see Debug Office Add-ins on a Mac for more information.

All platforms where MS Office for desktop is used/deployed are supported - Mac OS and Windows. But I've never heard about MS Office on Linux.

Feature requests on Tech Community are considered, when the dev team go through the planning process. Use the github label: Type: product feature request at https://aka.ms/M365dev-suggestions .

CodePudding user response：

I think the problem is that npm start is trying to open desktop Office and sideload the add-in. But you get that error because there is no desktop Office for Linux. You have to sideload and debug in Office on the web if you want to develop on a Linux computer.

Also, if you used yeoman generator, there should be a script named start:web in the package.json file. So you can try automatically sideload on the web like this:

Run the following command in the root directory of your project. When you run this command, the local web server starts. Replace "{url}" with the URL of an Excel document on your OneDrive or a SharePoint library to which you have permissions.

npm run start:web -- --document {url}

The following are examples.

npm run start:web -- --document https://contoso.sharepoint.com/:t:/g/EZGxP7ksiE5DuxvY638G798BpuhwluxCMfF1WZQj3VYhYQ?e=F4QM1R
npm run start:web -- --document https://1drv.ms/x/s!jkcH7spkM4EGgcZUgqthk4IK3NOypVw?e=Z6G1qp
npm run start:web -- --document https://contoso-my.sharepoint-df.com/:t:/p/user/EQda453DNTpFnl1bFPhOVR0BwlrzetbXvnaRYii2lDr_oQ?e=RSccmNP

Also, take a look at Debug add-ins on Linux.