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I have an add-in for MS Word. One of my users, who is on Word 2007, reports that the add-in is not being loaded. When she checks the COM add-ins list, it says "Load Behavior" is "Unloaded; Load at Startup" (value of 2 in LoadBehavior registry entry).

Yet when she checks the add-in's registry entry, LoadBehavior is set to 3 (Loaded; Load at Startup). The add-in is also not loaded at all.

Is there some reason for the discrepancy between what Word is reporting for the add-in, and what's in the registry, and is there a way to resolve it?

I have a hunch that Word has set a LoadBehavior value somewhere else on her system after the add-in crashed, but she is remote from me, and doesn't want me to remote control her computer to check myself.

Edit: Some additional info: if the user runs a macro to check my add-in in Application.COMAddins, Connect is set to False. However, updating this to True doesn't seem to have any effect. The property will stay True as long as Word is running, but if Word is restarted then it will revert to False (and the add-in is never loaded).

More information: The add-in had been disabled due to a crash, and put in the disabled add-ins list. The user enabled the add-in from the COM add-ins drop-down list, but the load behavior was then stuck on 2, despite the registry value being 3. WinWord.exe doesn't have any compatibility settings.

Also, I provide three add-ins: one for Word, one for Excel, and one for PowerPoint. The Excel and PowerPoint add-ins work fine on the user's computer. I test the add-in myself on XP, Vista, and 7 (32 and 64 bit). The user is on Vista 32 bit.

The Word add-in was working on the user's computer for about two years, but after a crash it was disabled, and the LoadBehavior was stuck on 2. The user actually tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but that didn't change the behavior.

Solution

0xA3's solution wasn't complete, but on the right track. It turns out that the user had installed a new antivirus program, which was disabling the add-in (silently! ::insert rant about overzealous AV::).

I also learned a valuable lesson: to some users, "Have you installed any new software" doesn't include antivirus programs. I'll have to change that question to, "Have you installed any new software, or any antivirus programs?"

A: 

Addins can be registered in the USER hive or the LOCAL MACHINE hive, same folder in each.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Your addin name

or

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Your addin name

be sure to check both.

drventure
Thanks. My add-in's RGS file is set to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, but I'm going to ask the user to check just in case.
Ryan Ginstrom
Update -- there was no entry in HKCU.
Ryan Ginstrom
Just remembered one other place to check. Office 2007 had this really WIERD scheme whereby reg entries would be created in the HKLM hive and when word loaded, it'd copy them over to the user hive. Check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0\User Settings\Word_Core\Create\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins and see if there are any entries in there.
drventure
As far as I know, they ditched that with Office 2010. I'm not seeing those entries anymore in any case.
drventure
That looked really promising, but unfortunately, nothing was set for my add-in there (Word_Core..).
Ryan Ginstrom