How to test if Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel is installed

Logotypes - Access and Excel In this blog post we described how to check if Microsoft Office is installed in a computer during an installation. But what if Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint is installed, but not Microsoft Access, which is what you want? How to handle this situation in Visual Installer?

In the new Visual Installer 2022 the answer is to use a new script condition that we have added to the script language. The name of the new script condition is IF ACCESS_INSTALLED and with this script condition you can check if Microsoft Access specifically has been installed in the computer. So instead of trying to use the Microsoft Office condition check (as described in the earlier blog post) you can use the new Microsoft Access condition check instead.

Below we show two examples of how to use the new condition:

// Example 1 – Tests if Microsoft Access is installed in the system
IF ACCESS_INSTALLED
RUN %DESTDIR\InstallAccessTools.exe
END IF

// Example 2 – Tests if Microsoft Access is not installed in the system
IF NOT ACCESS_INSTALLED
MSGBOX “Information”, “Microsoft Access is not installed in this computer!”, 2
END IF

You can also test if Microsoft Excel has been installed or not in the same way. Below we show two examples of how to use the Excel condition:

// Example 1 – Tests if Microsoft Excel is installed in the system
IF EXCEL_INSTALLED
RUN %DESTDIR\InstallExcelTools.exe
END IF

// Example 2 – Tests if Microsoft Excel is not installed in the system
IF NOT EXCEL_INSTALLED
MSGBOX “Information”, “Microsoft Excel is not installed in this computer!”, 2
END IF

It is also useful to know if the user has installed a 32 bit or 64 bit version of the Office program. But here you can use the same condition in Visual Installer’s script language as before (see the second half of this blog post for details).