PaperPort and Word

[John Gough]

Back in November I asked if anyone could tell me if two additions made
to Word by ScanSoft's PaperPort Pro 9 Office could be removed. These
were the "Print to PaperPort" command added to the File menu in Word
and the button to do the same put on a toolbar. I said that they could
both be taken off the normal way, but were then restored the next time
the program was opened. There were some suggestions back (for which I
was grateful), but nothing worked. I said that as a new version was
coming, I'd wait and see if there were any changes.

Just before Christmas I got PaperPort 10. It does exactly the same as
its predecessor, and there is no option to prevent it adding its bits
to Word. I note that they seem to be the very last things to load when
Word is started up.

So I tried asking PaperPort Support. After a couple of suggestions
that didn't work, I got the comment: "The links in Microsoft Word are
created by macros. Let me know if you still have that same problem
after you have tried the above. Unfortunately there is not a way of
deleting the PDF PaperPort macros in Word. However, you can try by
deleting the printer drivers in case you do not need that feature."

So my questions now, if anyone can help, are:
-- where can the macros be being put in Word (or Office), since they
do not get listed as Macros, as Templates and Add-Ins, or as COM
Add-Ins?
-- and if there is a software designer here, is it actually good
design practice to include in your software "compulsory" macros
affecting another company's products?

Thanks in advance if anyone can offer any advice.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi John,

If I'm not mistaken ScanSoft uses a COM add-in to add the menu items.
If the COM Add-in is a per machine add-in (available to all profiles)
then it won't be listed in the COM Add-ins utility available in Word.

In that case they can be a little difficult to track down. First check
Add/Remove Programs and see if there is a separate listing for the
add-in.

If that doesn't work then download the Process Explorer from:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

- Start Word
- Run the Process Explorer utility
- In the upper pane select Excel.exe
- Locate the "View DLLs" command in the Toolbar (if you see View
Handles then View DLLs is already in use)
- In the lower pane locate the DLLs and see if you can determine which
DLL could be causing the issue. The Description and Company Name
columns may help you out. (Click the Name column heading to sort)
- Locate the path for the DLL in a column on the right
- Once found exit Excel and rename the DLL to prevent it from loading.

Note it is best to rename the file extension rather than the file
name.

If you can not determine if a DLL is needed by the application then
use File/Save As to save a copy of the data as text. Then you can
copy/paste the DLLs from the Notepad for us to take a look at.

Regarding your software design question, it is common practice to
integrate a product within an application if your product can be
utilized in the application. I don't think that is necessarily the
issue, usually we see problems with *how* the third party integrates
their product. There are good design practices and bad design
practices.

A good design practice is to integrate the product without modifying a
user's personal preferences or settings. I don't think ScanSoft's
add-in incorporates bad design practices, aside from not making their
add-in easy to find and I suspect their product support doesn't know
much about their own add-in - otherwise they could have given you the
file name and location, but in this case you are encountering an issue
with how the COM Add-ins utility functions. As I previously noted, it
does not display COM Add-ins that are machine specific and this is an
area where Microsoft needs to create a better utility.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Beth Melton]

Glad to hear the problem has been resolved, John.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/