How to: Enable tracing of TFS add-ins for Excel and MS Project

TFS provides abilities to manage work items in Excel and MS Project. When you experience unexpected behaviors while managing work items in Excel or MS Project, one approach to diagnose this issue is to enable tracing. The trace log can give us more information and probably contains clues.

1. Create a file EXCEL.exe.config to enable tracing of Excel (WINPROJ.exe.config for MS Project).
2. Add the below content to the config file and save.

   <?xml version ="1.0"?>
   <configuration>
     <system.diagnostics>
       <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4">
         <listeners>
           <add name="myListener" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
            initializeData="c:\Logs\Excel.log" />
         </listeners>
       </trace>
       <switches>
         <add name="General" value="4" />
       </switches>
     </system.diagnostics>
   </configuration>

   
   



3. Go to the folder where EXCEL.exe or WINPROJ.exe locate. For Office 2007, they are in %\ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12.



4. Copy the EXCEL.exe.config or WINPROJ.exe.config there.



5. Restart Excel or MS Project. When you use functions in the TFS add-in, trace logs should be created.