I have some add-ins installed for Outlook. And there are entries in the path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Addins\UCAddin.LyncAddin.1, Where UCAddin.LyncAddin.1 is an entry for my Lync addin.
What do these registry entries mean for the add-in. How does it affect the working of the add-in.
Since I am also developing outlook add-in, I want to know if I need to worry about these registry entries.
Edit
This is not in particular about the lync add-in. It's about all the add-ins. Since there is a registry entry with my add-in, I want to know what is the significance of these registry entries.
I ran procmon and took a look at the stack associated with reading/writing those keys. Those numbered reg keys are used internally by Outlook and not something you need to mess with. You can safely ignore their existence.
Related
When certain large COM add-ins are installed on Outlook 2013 / 2016 for Windows. O365 add-ins get disabled and greyed out in email compose, but are still accessible if you write the email as a draft.
Is there a good explanation or solution for this behaviour? Are O365 add-in's not able to function normally when large COM add-ins are installed?
add-ins behavior is unpredictable when a COM plug-in is installed, because COM plug-ins can remove key item properties, change the ribbon or form entirely, etc. As a result, they are greyed out, as we didn't want the add-ins to load and behave unpredictably.
This is a very strange situation that I am in; scratching my head for answers.
I have developed an outlook addin that works perfectly on my dev machine and on about 90 % of the clients machines.
The load behavior of the addin is 3.
On 10% of the users, outlook starts up without loading the addin despite the load behaviour being 3. The user can manually make the addin active by going to the addin manager on outlook but after a restart this addin reverts back to being inactive bbut load behavior never changes from 3.
I used Install Shield LE to package this addin. I don't even know where to debug anymore, I tried changing different load behaviour values but still the same outcome. The addin just won't load on startup with this set of users.
The company uses ZenWorks to automatically install the addin on all the PCs from the MSI i generate using install shield.
One weird thing is, If i go to the installation directory of the addin and install the addin using the .vsto deployment file, it works and gets loaded on outlook (but thats makes it two addins installed).
I also checked the Resiliency section on the registry and the addin isn't there.
I have faced this issue. To solve this, you need to manually delete the registry entries from the following path.
Open registry editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\<Your add-in> and change the LoadBehavior to 3.
If the above registry entry is not found, then look for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\<Your add-in> and change the LoadBehavior to 3.
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Resiliency – remove the REG_BINARY keys found in DisabledItems and CrashingAddinList
where 15.0 is for outlook 2013.
If you are using 2010 outlook, replace 15.0 by 14.0 and for Outlook 2016 replace 15.0 by 16.0
Hope this helps.
I have c# outlook addin created in visual studio 2013.
It has windows forms also.
I am getting mad on generating msi file, any easier solution/steps for me, please ?
Mainly tell me, after completing the process, where do I find the final MSI file (like bin/release folder) ?
I installed this - https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/9abe329c-9bba-44a1-be59-0fbf6151054d
as well as installshield limited edition installer.
I was able to build it and ran the installation file(.exe) from disks folder and it is installing but not showing anything in the outlook.
Take a look at the Deploying an Office Solution section in MSDN. It describes two possible options for deploying your Office solution in depth:
Deploying an Office Solution by Using Windows Installer
Deploying an Office Solution by Using ClickOnce
It is up to you which way is to choose.
I was able to build it and ran the installation file(.exe) from disks folder and it is installing but not showing anything in the outlook.
There are multiple reasons why you don't see your add-in in Office applications.
First of all, make sure that you did all the steps described in the previously mentioned articles. Then I'd suggest checking the required windows registry keys for COM add-ins, see Registry Entries for Application-Level Add-Ins for more information.
Microsoft Office applications can disable add-ins that behave unexpectedly. If an application does not load your add-in, the application might have hard disabled or soft disabled your add-in.
Hard disabling can occur when an add-in causes the application to close unexpectedly. It might also occur on your development computer if you stop the debugger while the Startup event handler in your add-in is executing.
Soft disabling can occur when an add-in produces an error that does not cause the application to unexpectedly close. For example, an application might soft disable an add-in if it throws an unhandled exception while the Startup event handler is executing.
You can read more about that in the How to: Re-enable an Add-in That Has Been Disabled article in MSDN.
Finally, you may also check out the Trust Center settings in Outlook. The Macro Security settings can be applied to add-ins as well. May be it is required to sign the add-in with a digial signature and etc.
I have a problem. I've been installing my VSTO Outlook Add-In to the Outlook 2007 on the account that has no security limitations. For the setup, I am using a normal visual studio setup project. I've had the user install few versions of my application before and it worked fine. Recently, I've created a new version of my application (which is installed to HKLM and to HKCU registry (hotfix that allows me to install the add-in to HKLM registry was also installed)). Now the outlook add-in doesn't even load on the user's computer. If you look in Outlook/Trust Center/Add-ins/ you will see my outlook add-in showing up under "Inactive Application Add-ins", but when I try to enable it, I get a message "This add-in is installed for all users on this computer, and can only be connected or disconnected by an administrator" even though I am logged in as administrator. I also looked in the registry and it has LoadBehaviour as 3, which means that it should appear under active add-ins. I tried installing old version, but now it also doesn't work and does not even appear as installed Outlook add-in.
What can be a cause of this problem?
Thank you
I've spent a week on finding a solution and it was so damn simple... the problem was that I've set identical registry settings to HKCU registry and HKLM registry. As a result the registry settings were in conflict, since both HKCU tried to load this add-in and HKLM tried to load this add-in and as a result it didn't allow Outlook Add-In to load at all. As soon as I've got only the HKCU registry setting, my add-in loaded normally. =D
This also happens if you have the InstallAllUsersVisible flag = FALSE in the UI Interface if using an MSI package. Setting it back to the default TRUE fixed this error for me. I had it working using HKCU - but Victor F nailed the source of the issue.
Can someone give me a quick explanation of when I would use Visual Studio 2008 Outlook 2007 Ad-In project type? and how would that compare to developing a bunch of outlook macros directly in outlook?
Basically, I want to have some sort of application read email (with attachments) from a pop3 email box, do some filtering/editing/validation of the subject/sender/content and then if certain conditions are met, save the attachments to a local file, and then add an entry into an SQL server database table (i.e. date/sender/subject/message).
Seems there are at least 10 different ways to do this....so between an outlook macro and a VS Office Project, how do I pick?
I am not clear, if I create this solution as a Visual Studio outlook add-in, where does it run? Is it loaded into outlook, does it run as a separate process and communicates back and forth with outlook? if outlook is not running, does it start it?
An Outlook Add-on is a compiled component that uses the Outlook API to perform the tasks you need. A macro/VB script is an interpreted script that actually uses the same API. The add-on approach is better if you want to deploy your functionality.
When you work on an Outlook add-on in Visual Studio, you'll be creating a .NET component, which integrates into the Outlook application, which is written in C++ so uses COM. You'll have to be careful about managed/unmanaged types and releasing objects you retrieve from Outlook.
I have recently completed just such a tool, but I chose to use Add-in Express (http://www.add-in-express.com/). These guys provide a layer of abstraction over the [challenging] Outlook API and also provide some excellent support if you're stuck.
In my case, with Add-in Express, I "run" by setting Outlook as the application command to run, in the Project properties. Add-in Express sorts out the installation of the add-on within Outlook. So when I press "Run", Outlook starts and my add-in is displayed, which may be debugged in the normal fashion. I'm not sure how VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) works in this respect - or at least, I can't remember.
This is an example of an outlook add-in..
Personally, I don't see macros distributable.