Outlook add-in is constantly being disabled

[q3537wh]

One of my company's customers is experiencing a strange problem with an
Outlook add-in we built. The add-in is often disabled when some of the
users start Outlook, and they have to go into COM add-ins to add it
back. The problem is that this happens pretty regularly. They'd add the
add-in, it'd work for a while, but some days later, when they start
Outlook again, the add-in disappears again, and they have to add it
back again.

Some (but not all) of these users have
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\OurOutlookAddin.OutlookAddin
set to 0 or 1. But changing it to a 3 hasn't worked.

Are there any known causes that leads to an Outlook addin being
constantly disabled?

TIA

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Unhandled exceptions is the #1 cause.

Disabled addins can usually be re-enabled only by deleting the registry key
for disabling addins or by removing the addin from the disabled items list
in the Help, About, Disabled Items dialog.

Another cause of disabling can be script stoppers. If you use "New" or
"CreateObject" in your code or access Windows Scripting your addin might be
disabled because the script stopper causes that to fail, the exception is
unhandled and the addin gets disabled. Also very common.

 

[Michael Tissington]

I did not know there was a registry key that did the same as removing it
from the list in Help About ... What is the registry key ?

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It's all or nothing though. If the key is deleted all disabled addins are
re-enabled. Maybe not such a good idea.

Disabling adds a binary value for each addin with a name that's randomly
generated. The Resiliency key exists if there is at least one disabled item,
but if you re-enable the addin then the Resiliency key and DisabledItems
subkey are both deleted. So the presence of the Resiliency key serves as a
general test for the existence of disabled items. You can re-enable the
addin by deleting the specific binary reg value, or by removing the whole
key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Resiliency\DisabledItems

11.0 would be 10.0 for Outlook 2002, 12.0 for Outlook 2007.

 

[q3537wh]

In my situation the disabled add-in does not appear in Help | About |
Disabled items. Instead it's missing from the COM Add-Ins window.
According to http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms269003.aspx and
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms268871.aspx , that's called
a "soft disable". These articles also square with your contention that
an unhandled exception is the likely culprit.

Most of our customers do not encounter this problem. It's just this one
organization. At the risk of sounding like I'm fishing or being too
general, is there anything that is environment specific that can
trigger an unhandled exception like this that is practically
unreproducible anywhere else?

 

[Michael Tissington]

Hmm, how do I know which binary value relates to my add-in ?

--
Michael Tissington
http://www.oaklodge.com
http://www.sqlview.net

It's all or nothing though. If the key is deleted all disabled addins are
re-enabled. Maybe not such a good idea.

Disabling adds a binary value for each addin with a name that's randomly
generated. The Resiliency key exists if there is at least one disabled
item, but if you re-enable the addin then the Resiliency key and
DisabledItems subkey are both deleted. So the presence of the Resiliency
key serves as a general test for the existence of disabled items. You can
re-enable the addin by deleting the specific binary reg value, or by
removing the whole key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Resiliency\DisabledItems

11.0 would be 10.0 for Outlook 2002, 12.0 for Outlook 2007.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It could be other addins causing a fault, it could be a script stopper, it
could be some other addin interfering with something your addin is doing
causing a fault in your own addin.

Shared addins in .NET that aren't shimmed to use their own namespaces will
disable all other shared addins like that if they fault.

About the only things that you can do are a thorough code review and using
an error log file as well as remote debugging and examining the event logs.
I can't offer anything more specific.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You don't. That's why it's all or nothing.

 

[JJ]

You can look at my post in microsoft.public.developer.outlook.addins titled
"What sets LoadBehavior back to 2?".

I had a problem where a COM add-in I was using was always getting disabled
if another program (not an add-in, a VB app which accessed Outlook via via
automation) ran without Outlook running.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to do any further analysis of the
problem - for now I just stopped running the other program. If it sounds
like it might apply to your customer, make sure there are no programs being
started (perhaps via the Startup folder) that access Outlook via automation
before Outlook is started. If there are, try disabling them and see if that
has any effect. I know it shouldn't matter, but that was the cause in my
case.

 

[Andy]

Hi,
Experiencing the follow issue: We have an outlook addin. When opening a
certain .msg, Outlook will hang. On 're-launch' of Outlook, and choosing
[YES] to disable our addin, this .msg file is opened without issue.

I am trying to work with our developers, but wanted to throw this scenario
out here just in case there is something obvious. I know that the short term
solution (to re-enable out addin) is to delete the resiliency key, but am
banging my head trying to find the root cause of the hanging. I.e. is there
any extra logging, channels for investigation i can pursue? I've tried
regmon, and process-explorer, and netiher seem to have too much 'obvious'
information...

Any words of wisdom appreciated....

Thanks
Andy

 

[Andy]

Hi,
Experiencing the follow issue: We have an outlook addin. When opening a
certain .msg, Outlook will hang. On 're-launch' of Outlook, and choosing
[YES] to disable our addin, this .msg file is opened without issue.

I am trying to work with our developers, but wanted to throw this scenario
out here just in case there is something obvious. I know that the short term
solution (to re-enable out addin) is to delete the resiliency key, but am
banging my head trying to find the root cause of the hanging. I.e. is there
any extra logging, channels for investigation i can pursue? I've tried
regmon, and process-explorer, and netiher seem to have too much 'obvious'
information...

Any words of wisdom appreciated....

Thanks
Andy

 

[Andy]

Hi,
Experiencing the follow issue: We have an outlook addin. When opening a
certain .msg, Outlook will hang. On 're-launch' of Outlook, and choosing
[YES] to disable our addin, this .msg file is opened without issue.

I am trying to work with our developers, but wanted to throw this scenario
out here just in case there is something obvious. I know that the short term
solution (to re-enable out addin) is to delete the resiliency key, but am
banging my head trying to find the root cause of the hanging. I.e. is there
any extra logging, channels for investigation i can pursue? I've tried
regmon, and process-explorer, and netiher seem to have too much 'obvious'
information...

Any words of wisdom appreciated....

Thanks
Andy

It's all or nothing though. If the key is deleted all disabled addins are
re-enabled. Maybe not such a good idea.

Disabling adds a binary value for each addin with a name that's randomly
generated. The Resiliency key exists if there is at least one disabled item,
but if you re-enable the addin then the Resiliency key and DisabledItems
subkey are both deleted. So the presence of the Resiliency key serves as a
general test for the existence of disabled items. You can re-enable the
addin by deleting the specific binary reg value, or by removing the whole
key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Resiliency\DisabledItems

11.0 would be 10.0 for Outlook 2002, 12.0 for Outlook 2007.

 

[Andy]

Hi,
Experiencing the follow issue: We have an outlook addin. When opening a
certain .msg, Outlook will hang. On 're-launch' of Outlook, and choosing
[YES] to disable our addin, this .msg file is opened without issue.

I am trying to work with our developers, but wanted to throw this scenario
out here just in case there is something obvious. I know that the short term
solution (to re-enable out addin) is to delete the resiliency key, but am
banging my head trying to find the root cause of the hanging. I.e. is there
any extra logging, channels for investigation i can pursue? I've tried
regmon, and process-explorer, and netiher seem to have too much 'obvious'
information...

Any words of wisdom appreciated....

Thanks
Andy

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Only one post was necessary and it wasn't necessary to start a brand new
thread also with the same problem.