OneNote 2013 Add-in won't load. How to debug?

Question

I'm following the excellent tutorial by Malte Ahrens on how to create a OneNote add-in.

Initially I followed it step by step, making a few changes (just renaming the class, and using my own name and GUID in the assembly) info. As I'm using VS2012 and am not yet ready to hand-roll a WiX installer I manually copied over the built dll to the correct place and also created a registry file to make the requisite entries. I confirmed that they were all there, loaded up OneNote but no add-in, going to "mange COM addins" section I saw the following error:

Load Behavior: Not loaded. A runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in.

I spent some time debugging this but didn't get very far. So this afternoon I decided to start again but copy his code verbatim. I simply downloaded the example project, used the trial of Vdproj to Wix to create the installer and built everything.

I get the exact same error.

Why is this please? What does this mean and most importantly how do I debug the problem?

A few specifics about my environment and where it may differ from the original tutorial.

I am running Office 2013 AND it's 64bit. His tutorial is for 2010. This means when I loaded up the demo solution I had to remove the non-existent reference to the Onenote 14 Interop and add the v15 version.

In terms of registry entries they go to the right place, not the WOW6432 registry nodes. I doubly know this as if I load up OneNote and then refresh the HKCR registry node for the add-in, the LoadBehavior switches to 0x00000002, (disabled).

Other things that may be worth noting.

I have enabled OneNote logging and it's quiet on my issue.

There are 2 other posts on here with a seemingly similar problem (but Office 2010) here and here, neither got a response. The first guy had it loading once, but then had to manualy start it each time, mine never loads (and I've not signed my assembly) the second guy never got a response.

As I say, even knowing how to debug this further would be a great step forwards.

Edit:

I've gone back to debugging my own version, which is almost identical anyway as I'm not sure what the installer is actually doing and I think because it's a demo of the wix converter it's only allowing me to build for x86.

If I add OneNote.exe under "start external program" and run debug on my add-in, I see the following lines appear when I try and tick the add-in under "manage COM add-ins" within OneNote. I'm afraid I'm still pretty green at all this so I'm not sure what it means.

First-chance exception at 0x00007ffe4f86ab78 in ONENOTE.EXE: 0x800401FD: Object is not connected to server.
First-chance exception at 0x00007ffe4f86ab78 in ONENOTE.EXE: 0x800401FD: Object is not connected to server.
First-chance exception at 0x00007ffe4f86ab78 in ONENOTE.EXE: 0x800401FD: Object is not connected to server.

Also, since reading up more I think me simply copying my dll into the install folder program files\[manufacturer]\[application] (as I don't have an installer) was not enough. I've now executed this against my dll

PS C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319> .\RegAsm.exe 

and it came back with

Microsoft .NET Framework Assembly Registration Utility version 4.0.30319.33440
for Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0.30319.33440
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Types registered successfully

Is there anything else I should be doing to register the dll correctly?

Answer 1

Enable logging for OneNote 2013:

Create a file "EnableOneNote2013APILogging.reg"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\OneNote\Options\Logging] 

"EnableLogging"=dword:00000001 

"EnableTextFileLogging"=dword:0000001

"ttidLogObjectModel"=dword:00000001 

"ttidLogObjectModelAddins"=dword:00000001

Create a file "DisableOneNote2013APILogging.reg"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\OneNote\Options\Logging] 

"EnableLogging"=dword:00000000 

"EnableTextFileLogging"=dword:0000000

"ttidLogObjectModel"=dword:00000000 

"ttidLogObjectModelAddins"=dword:00000000 

This is based on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/descapa/archive/2006/12/08/debugging-the-onenote-api-enable-logging.aspx but you need to add EnableTextFileLogging ;-).

The logfile is created in %temp%\OneNote.log

For OneNote 2010 change the path in the .reg files to \14.0\ instead of \15.0\