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I am having a horrible time getting started at creating an add-in for Outlook. I want to use the new html/javascript/manifest approach. I have been able to create a manifest and application which works great with outlook.live.com. Where I am completely getting stuck is with desktop Outlook. How do I install/debug my add-in with desktop Outlook?

I cannot find anything in the UI which will let me add this style of add-in. Additionally the Microsoft documentation did not make things any clearer. Their docs seem to hint using this type of add-in is only possible if you are connecting to an Exchange server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Yes the add-in will load on Outlook desktop only if your mailbox is Exchange. I am not sure the add-ins work with a personal Microsoft account (e.g hotmail.com, outlook.com) and Office desktop. Keep in mind that the support of mail add-ins for personal account is relatively new (officially announced in march 2016).

To develop your add-in I suggest you to use a organizational account (i.e. Office365 account). Support for organizational account has been released in 2013 and is a much more mature solution for you to get started. You can have a free dev account at dev.office.com.

Edit: October 2016 personal account are supported now by "Personal mailbox accounts" aka outlook.com accounts

Let us keep in mind that a mail add-in is not installed on a mail client (desktop, OWA) but on the mail account. When you "install" an add-in you only set a xml file on your mailbox that basically says "there is a web add-in out there called X and that is served at this url...". Then, if you install add-in X on your mailbox [email protected], this add-in will load the add-in web iframes whether you are consulting your mailbox with Outlook Web Access (OWA) or Outlook Desktop.

To install the add-in for one user mailaccount, you have to use the Outlook Web Access. See this blog post. Note also that you can install the add-in for the whole organisation (Admin > Exchange Admin > Add-ins). Finally, Visual Studio is also able to push the manifest to your office 365 mailbox. To have this you need Office Development Tools.

For debugging in Outlook Desktop, I know two approaches.

  1. Use the Office Developement Tools with visual studio and select your sample add-in project as 'Starting project' and in properties select 'Office Desktop'. Office Dev Tools
  2. Plain web development. Personally, I do not use really much the Office Development Tools. I install manually my add-in with "https://localhost:XXXX" for url and I start the web project on IIS express to do the debugging. For stepping into the source code, I use the debugger of my browser (Chrome, Edge, IE etc.) when browsing in OWA. When I need to step into source code specifically on Desktop (For windows or for Mac) I use Vorlon.js see also this blog post. My advice is also to test/debug frequently with IE 11 (still available in Win10!) and OWA. Indeed, the browser used internally by Office Desktop for the add-ins is IE.
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Thank you for the very thorough answer. I think I am out of luck installing the add-in with my account. Reading the docs more I think you are right that I cannot install add-ins because I am technically not using exchange: dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/publish/publish. Thank you for your help.
Also Vorlon.js looks amazing! Thanks for the link.

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