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

References:

1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/testing/debug-office-add-ins-on-ipad-and-mac