I have a Visual Studio setup with a VSTO word project and when I click run it works fine.
But how do I set up a text document to use my code without starting Visual Studio?
You have to deploy VSTO from time to time manually or using the installer. Check out this blog post for a detailed explanation.
You can do this using a Windows Installer project; starting point here . You can also use the Publishing Wizard.
A more general starting point can be found on MSDN here .