Word 2013 add-ins load but don't activate in user account, ok in admin account

[Lup]

System: Windows 10 home 64 bit, Office 2013 32 bit

MS Word works fine if started in the admin account but when using it from an user account the add-ins (Stylewriter4 and SaveNumberedVersions) have to be "hand-started" by checking the empty boxes for those add-ins in Developers/Templates/GlobalTemplates and Add-ins.
Not a showstopper but certainly annoying!
Any suggestions of where to look for a solution?
-Lup

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Which folder is your Word Startup Folder? It sounds like this is not. If a template is not in the designated Startup Folder it will appear in the Add-Ins list as unchecked next time you start Word. If it is in the Startup Folder, it will be loaded automatically upon startup.

 

[macropod]

Are the addins signed? Have you checked the Trust Centre settings relating to those addins, including for the filenames and paths they use?

 

[Lup]

Are the addins signed? Have you checked the Trust Centre settings relating to those addins, including for the filenames and paths they use?

Thanks macropod,
No, they arn't signed. But that causes no problem when run from the admin account so that's hardly the problem. The folder is listed as a trusted one.
-Lup

 

[Lup]

Charles Kenyon,
Thanks for your hint but the problems doesn't seem to be there either. It certainly looks like if Word wasn't accessing the Autostart folder But in desperation I have tried loading the add-in files into into all four permutations of "Autostart", "Startup" folders and admin user name and "normal" user name. Still no help.
-Lup

 

[Lup]

Which folder is your Word Startup Folder? It sounds like this is not. If a template is not in the designated Startup Folder it will appear in the Add-Ins list as unchecked next time you start Word. If it is in the Startup Folder, it will be loaded automatically upon startup.

Determining the Word startup folder, as set out in your article, was one of my first actions when I ran into this problem. The add-ins ARE in the right folder (C:\users\<user name>\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Autostart) but still Word doesn't activate them! For the admin account the same files of course are in a different folder (C:\users\<admin name>\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Autostart) and there they are activated properly.

However, there is a difference between the Word set-ups in the two accounts: The admin account uses the default locations for all user files (documents, templates, re-creation and so on) whereas the user account has them re-addressed to a set of local Dropbox folders (I work with three PCs in two different locations) I can't see why this should affect the behaviour of the add-ins but I have learnt to take nothing for granted with Word!
-Lup

 

[Lup]

1. Added a couple of Add-ins to both the master and normal user accounts. For the master they are both activated automatically, in the user account they have to be activated manually evry time I start Word.
At least the new add-ins were found and listed among the present but inactive add-ins, it is just the activation that remains missing.

2. Uninstalled and reinstalled Office. No change. Given that the setup information was not removed during the uninstall it might not be so surprising that the new installation behaves exactly as the old one.

Doing a complete reinstall of Windows 10 and Office seems a little bit too much to doo when chasing this minor inconvenience but might be the only option I have left.
-Lup

 

[Lup]

After twelve months of suffering in silence...
Today I finally got somewhere with this problem! Not a solution but a work-around:

It seems Word behaves in a funny way in this particular user account. Instead of searching for add ins in ...Microsoft\Word\Autostart\, as it should, it does so in ...Microsoft\Word\ . Putting the add-ins to that folder made them load properly when word was started.
But as that would have meant an extra action every time I added a new add-in I did the following:
- Renamed the old ...Microsoft\Word folder WordOld
- Created a new, empty, ...Microsoft\Word folder
- Created a new folder Autostart elsewhere in my PC (More about that below)
- Loaded all the add-insinto that new folder
- Created a Junction Point that made ...Microsoft\Word\Autostart point at that new folder
- Created aanother Junction Point that made ...Microsoft\Word\ also point at the new folder
That way any well behaved application that wants to access the word startup folder is pointed att the new Startup folder and likewise any less well behaved one (like Word!) is also pointed there. Problem solved!
What's still not clear is how the same Word-installation that behaves properly in the admin account loses "Startup" from the address path when it should access the starup folder frpm a user account!

Note
The use of Junction points is standar for me. I work with five computers in two different countries and like to keep them more or less like each other. That means a lot of the data and many application configuration files go into Dropbox and so stay syncronized. The Word startup folder didn't originally belong there but now when it does I'm happy, One sync problem less to keep track of!
-Lup

 

[Lup]

Sorry!
Seems I was a little too kvick in thinking my solution worked. After a restart it was quite problematic again! But the fact that Word at startup was looking in ...word instead of ...word\Autostart holds true!
Back to work!
-Lup

 

[Lup]

Ok, it was the second Junction point that was too much. It caused recursive calls and similiar nice things...
Without that addition all seems to work ok.
-Lup