Introduction
The purpose of this article is to provide corporate developers with a method to release, maintain and update an add-in in a network environment. This is based upon my strategies for doing this same.

Assumptions made in this article are:

1. You are a developer of some caliber, understanding enough VBA to create your own routines.
2. You know that your add-in routines should be targeted at the ActiveWorkbook object primarily, but may refer to ThisWorkbook on occasion. (Not the other way around.)
3. You have a network environment to work with.
4. You need to develop your add-in, publicly release it (within your company), and maintain/upgrade it in future.

There are three types of spreadsheets built in the world today:

1. The "quick 'n' dirty for your eyes only" type spreadsheet. It doesn't need to be pretty, and doesn't need a ton of time spent making it readable or understandable for the rest of the world.
2. The well thought out, re-usable, stable spreadsheet. This one is used many times, always works as intended, and can be relied on over and over again.
3. Version 1, trying to act as version 2. This is by far the most frustrating spreadsheet out there. Usually they have evolved from a "quick 'n' dirty" that had to be handed off to someone else, but whatever their origin, they are hard to use, and their accuracy may be called into question. Many times the users have improperly maintained them, overwritten important formulas, or just plain lost the methods needed to use it properly.

Many users mistakenly place their VBA code in the wrong area, which can lead to their code not working, errors and large amounts of frustration.

This page contains a listing of the different types of objects which can hold code, and what code is intended to go in each object.

Types of objects in Microsoft Excel:

As shown by the screenshot of from the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) Project Explorer, the following types of objects can exist in a Microsoft Excel file:

Object Type

1. Worksheet Objects (Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3)
2. ThisWorkbook Object (ThisWorkbook)