How to debug Excel desktop add-in on a Mac
Debugging with Safari Web Inspector on a Mac
If you have add-in that shows UI in a task pane or in a content add-in, you can debug an Office Add-in using Safari Web Inspector.
To be able to debug Office Add-ins on Mac, you must have Mac OS High Sierra AND Mac Office Version 16.9.1 (Build 18012504) or later.
To start, open a terminal and set the OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras
property for the relevant Office application as follows:
# For word
defaults write com.microsoft.Word OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras -bool true
# For Excel
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras -bool true
# For Powerpoint
defaults write com.microsoft.Powerpoint OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras -bool true
# For Outlook
defaults write com.microsoft.Outlook OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras -bool true
Important
Mac App Store builds of Office do not support the OfficeWebAddinDeveloperExtras
flag.
Then, open the Office application and sideload your add-in. Right-click the add-in and you should see an Inspect Element option in the context menu. Select that option and it will pop the Inspector, where you