I've been experiencing a mysterious problem where the task pane hosting my add-in closes completely after code in my add-in sends and receives an XMLHttpRequest - but ONLY with the new Outlook Online UI. It works perfectly fine in Outlook desktop on Windows and Mac. There are no exceptions thrown in the web debugger and nothing relevant from my add-in's console logs. I can set a single breakpoint on random lines of code in various functions across multiple app classes that are run after the button that fires the webrequest is clicked, and the breakpoint gets hit and stops for a second – before the task pane closes completely. It is very bizarre.
I’ve also ran a network trace of what happens when the task pane disappears, and notice that two requests always occur in the new Outlook Online only (the numbers change but are always sequential):
https://outlook.office.com/owa/service.svc?action=GetConversationItems&n=55&app=Mail
https://outlook.office.com/owa/service.svc?action=GetConversationItems&n=56&app=Mail
I’m guessing that the new Outlook Online is erroneously detecting a context switch of some kind to trigger any open task panes to close. And note that the task pane NEVER disappears when the task pane is pinned or when the task pane is hosted in a full item window.
Here’s a recording of the task pane disappearing: https://www.screencast.com/t/RO7p0Zu5oP. Note how the selection of the current email is also cleared.
I know I'll be asked to provide a code sample, but given how the add-in has been firing this web request for months without issue until running in the new Outlook Online, I can't see how the problem lies within my code. Also note that:
Add-ins cannot close a read item task pane with code, only compose add-ins can (mine is a read mode add-in)
Only the user changing the message selection should close a task pane (if it is not pinned)
Add-ins cannot change the message selection
Any exceptions in the add-in that cause it to crash should be handled by the add-in framework and a message should be displayed in the task pane header (e.g. "This add-in is not responding"). The task pane should NEVER close
Is this happening to anyone else? Can somebody on the Office Dev team confirm that there's no way this scenario should occur?
Related
I work on an add-in for Microsoft Outlook, and we’ve noticed that in the Outlook Web App our Add-in cannot open at all when we attempt to open it from the “More Add-ins” button. The menu that lists more add-ins will open, but then clicking our add-in closes the menu with nothing happening.
We used to have our Add-in’s ribbon menu open when it was clicked here. We first encountered the broken behavior yesterday (7/28/22).
We’ve checked if this is happening to all Add-ins with a list of ribbon commands, and this seems to be the case for all Add-ins. To reproduce this error, we’ve implemented Microsoft’s example for Add-in commands (https://github.com/officedev/outlook-add-in-command-demo) by uploading to https://officeapp.s3.amazonaws.com/command-demo-manifest.xml and installing from URL.
Clicking the “Add-In Command” closes the menu, and nothing happens.
The expected behavior is a list of commands should show:
Additional Note: The ribbon command menu correctly appears if the Add-in is pinned to the toolbar via Settings->Mail->Customize actions->Toolbar. This is how we were able to take a screenshot to demonstrate the expected behavior.
Thank you.
Thank you for reaching out. This is a known issue within the Outlook web client. We are working on a fix for this issue, but do not have a timeline to share at this moment.
I want the user to press on a command button which will run an API. If the API returns results, I want this to launch the taskpane and then display the result of the API.
Is this possible?
If we speak about web add-ins the task pane is launched by the button click independently of API results. At runtime you may decided what to display on the task pane.
But if you mean a custom task pane as a part of COM add-in you can do whatever you like - hide, show and etc.
For web add-ins, launching a task pane after running some code/API is not possible today. We track Outlook add-in feature requests on our Tech Community Page. Please submit your request there and choose the appropriate label(s). Feature requests on Tech Community are considered, when we go through our planning process.
Here are two alternatives I would suggest considering to see if they can work for your scenario
adding a command with ExecuteFunction as an action https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/manifest/functionfile and launching a dialog (displayDialogAsync)
Or, run ExecuteFunction that adds notification message with an action link that user can click to open a taskpane https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/outlook/office.notificationmessageaction?view=outlook-js-preview
Issue
I've had users reporting that the button for reaching our task-pane Office Add-in (on the ribbon) disappears. There are cases where multiple add-ins are enabled, but ours is the only one that is missing. Seems like it is occurring on both Mac and Windows.
When they look in the Store it still looks like it is enabled. One way to fix it is to remove the add-in and install it again, but when it happens reguraly it's annoying and users can't bother to fix it every time.
The add-in is hosted on S3 in AWS
The add-in is configured to only be visible when composing email
Question
What could be the cause of this happening? How can we fix it?
There is currently no known issues surrounding this. Where the Add-in is hosted, should not matter. If where your icon is cannot be reached, then your add-in will load after a certain amount of time with a default icon. (this does not sound like what is happening, but this can cause your add-in to not show up for a while)
In general, when users complain about this, it is because they have switched tabs on the ribbon. This can be confusing because add-ins are in a different location when doing an inline reply vs doing a pop-out window. (see below screenshot). Most of the time, this occurs during inline reply, and the user has clicked away from the "message" ribbon to the "Home" ribbon. Clicking back on the "message" ribbon, and the add-in should show up again. If the "message" ribbon is not there, then selecting another message, then back on the draft should put the "message" ribbon back.
Another possible explanation is that an admin has disabled the add-in, but not installed it.
If this is not what is happening, we would need more information on the repro steps. Version numbers of the Client Hosts. Version number of the server, and perhaps a copy of the add-in manifest.
we have implemented the Pinnable Taskpane by following the article below.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/add-ins/pinnable-taskpane
This works well in Outlook and OWA both.
Issue: We have 4 Ribbon command button for our Outlook add-in in Read view. We activate the Add-In with one of the button, lets say button A. Once the add-in is activated it shows the functionality from button A. We then pin the taskpane and move around the different messages. while navigating through certain special messages, app view changes and shows the data from the message. This is expected behavior. Once this view is loaded, we can not reset to original view by clicking the button A again on the Ribbon. However if we click button B, it eventually opens up another Task pane instance on top of previously pinned one and navigates to functionality B. The only way it can be reset is to unpin and restart the add-in.
This does not happen in OWA and only specific to Outlook. I ran a test on Outlook 2016 build 9126.2282.
Could someone point out if this is a known issue?
When trying to open Outlook 2007 on Windows Server 2003, I get this error message:
“A dialogue box is open. Close it and try it again.”
I try and open Outlook in safe mode by using outlook /safe (in the Run command) and it works fine after it says configuring outlook accounts "Please enter your full name and initials below" (the full name and intials fields are already prefilled) and I click the OK button on the same and I answer the RSS Feeds subscription as either Yes or No.
Once I try closing and reopening Outlook, again I see the same error message as “A dialogue box is open. Close it and try it again.”
This does not let me open any new window to send emails. How can I fix whatever is causing this error?
It could possibly be due to an add-in that is acting up. Try to determine which add-in it is by disabling them one by one until it is identified. To disable an add-in, go to the Tools menu, click Trust Center, and then click Add-ins. A list of add-ins are listed. For each Type of add-in you see, choose them in the Manage listbox at the bottem and click Go. Uncheck the add-in to disable it.
Try using Task Manager to end any other Outlook processes, then try opening it again. Your problem could be due to a non-responsive Outlook process, or a background one.
Good luck!
Do you happen to use a virtual window manager (like virtuawin or bbbLean)? If so, you may not see the modal dialog box as it is in another virtual window and Outlook will not accept any input. It happens to me often and at first I was frustrated that Outlook 'hangs' frequently and is not a robust app. For me it was dialog box that said something like "Do you want to auto-archive the folder?".
The dialog box may also be hidden behind the main window. You can try using Alt-TAB to cycle through you windows and you should see the dialog box.
This was caused by a windows update on windows 2003 server.
I did a system restore to an earlier point and it worked fine. Thanks for the support.