I cannot access the Excel interop from my VB program - vb.net

Question

I have had to replace my laptop. One of the applications I have needed to install is Visual Studio Community 2019 since I rely on some programs which I wrote in VB. My memory of the 2015 version is that I just installed it. With the 2019 version, I must specify which components I need. Given how many components are available, I can see why they cannot install everything. I need access the Excel interop and have downloaded every component that might give access to the interop without any apparent success. The statement Imports Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel gives the error “{) Namespace Microsoft. Namespace or type specified in the Imports ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel’ does not contain any public member or cannot be found.”
Searching for help, I found: “to use the features of a Microsoft Office application from an Office project, you must use the primary interop assembly (PIA) for the application.” For my 64-bit computer, these should, apparently, be installed in “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Shared\Visual Studio Tools for Office\PIA\”.
I find that folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Shared\Visual Studio Tools for Office\PIA\” contains subfolders “Office14” and “Office15”. Each of these subfolders contains a different set of PIAs. Both contain “Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll” with the Office 14 version dated 31Mar2015 and the Office 15 version dated 7Oct2015.
I use Office version 15. Should I move the PIAs I want from folder “PIA\Office15” to folder “PIA” or have I misunderstood something else?

Answer 1

You can try to install the Nuget package Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel form Nuget Package Manager.
First, right click the project and select Manage NuGet Packages....
Then type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel in the search bar and install it:

Answer 2

Kyle Wang’s answer allowed me to solve my problem. However, his images and descriptions differed from my experience with Visual Studio 2019. I suspect he uses an earlier version. This answer documents my experience with Visual Studio Community 2019 in the hope that other can benefit from my troubles.
With Visual Studio 2015, the version I have been using, only Visual Studio is installed. With Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio Installer is also installed.
If I open Visual Studio Installer I see:
If I click Modify, I see:
If I scroll down a little I see:
The blue ticks in the righthand corner identify the workloads I have already installed.
If I click Individual Components, I see:
I am unsure which components were downloaded because they were included in a selected workload and which were downloaded because I selected every component that might include the Excel InterOp I was looking for. I will probably uninstall Visual Studio and re-install now I know what I need.
If I scroll down enough, I see:
I definitely needed to download NuGet package manager if I want access to the Excel InterOp. I do not know if I needed NuGet targets and build tasks. If I re-install Visual Studio I will try without NuGet targets and build tasks and update this answer to report if it is needed. I have not found any documentation describing the significance of these components, so it seems you need to experiment to determine what components you need.
Once you have selected the workloads and or individual components you want, click Modify in the bottom righthand corner. A progress screen is displayed while the installation is performed. When it has finished, close Visual Studio Installer.
Open Visual Studio 2019 and then create or open the solution that requires the Excel InterOp. The fourth tab in the top row is Project. Click it. The bottom but one line in the dropdown menu is Manage NuGet Packages…. Click it. You will see:
Click Browse to get:
https://www.nuget.org/ claims they hold 2,031,503 versions of 181,450 unique packages. As far as I can tell, they are displayed in order of download numbers. For example, Newtonsoft.Json has been downloaded 320.5 million times. To find any particular package you must use search. Searching for “microsoft.office.interop” reduces the list to something manageable with the Excel Interop at the top. Select the package you need and click Install on the right.