Microsoft Office troubleshooting

In order to use the FileHold Office Client (FOC), you need a stable and correctly configured Office installation. Your Office installation should have the latest updates from Microsoft as should the correct version of .NET and your operating system. The detailed requirements for using FileHold with Office are on the system requirements page. Pay careful attention to the 32 bit or 64 bit Office versions.

This technical note is written for and intended to be used by qualified system administrators. Contact your FileCare technical support team if you would like assistance with any of these steps. Always make sure you have adequate backup and recovery contingencies prepared before making any changes to your system.

Missing FileHold icons/ribbon

If the FileHold ribbon is not present or the FileHold icons are not present in the add-ons ribbon you may need to take one of the corrective actions below.

There are a few possible causes for this condition.

1. The Addins were not installed when the FileHold Desktop Application (FDA) was installed. You may need to reinstall the FDA using these instructions.
2. Microsoft Office .NET Programmability Support not enabled. This is required to use FOC.
3. If you are using Outlook and you cannot see all of the FOC options, make sure you have opened an email. Most FOC options are only available when you open an email.
4. The FileHold add-in has been disabled.

Enable .NET programmability support for Microsoft Office

1. In Microsoft Windows, go to Programs and Features from the Control Panel.
2. Select the Microsoft Office entry and click Change.
3. Select the Add or Remove Features and click Continue.
4. In the Installation Options, expand the node for each of the FOC-supported Office applications and enable the “.NET Programmability Support” option by selecting Run. The FileHold Office Client (FOC) supported applications are Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and OneNote.

    

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5. Click on Continue so that Microsoft Office can install this option. This will then bring the ability for FileHold menu options to function in every Office applications.

    

6. Now uninstall and reinstall the FileHold Desktop Client.

    

You can also run a repair in add/remove programs for the FileHold Desktop Client to reinstall the Office integration if it was already installed. You may also need to uninstall the Desktop Client and reinstall it completely to enable Microsoft Office support.

7. Once completed, reboot your computer, and then launch the FDA and login, and then launch MS Office as needed.

    

Enable the FileHold add-on

Each Microsoft Office application must have the FileHold Office Client add-on enabled. This is typically accessed from the application Options. The exact location varies depending on the version of Office.

1. For each Microsoft Office application, ensure the FileHold Office Client add-in is enabled and click OK.
2. After enabling the add-in, re-open the window to see if the check box persisted.

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3. If it does not remain enabled, then you may need to edit the registry. The keys to check vary by application and version, but they all follow a similar pattern. For Excel 2010 the key would be

    

   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Resiliency\DisabledItems

   The data at this key will be in binary format.

4. Open each entry and look for the one for with

    

   66 00 69 00 6C 00 65 00 68 00 6F 00 6C 00 64 00 f.i.l.e.h.o.l.d.
5. Delete this entry then return to step 1.

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6. If the above steps do not work, stay in Registry Editor and do a search for the following: FOC.Connect
7. For each FOC.Connect key, set the LoadBehaviour value to 3. You will find multiple entries for FOC.Connect key so you will need to check each one.
8. Exit the Registry Editor and open a Microsoft Office application to verify the FileHold ribbon is enabled.
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Working with resiliency for Office 2013 and higher

Office 2013 and higher offer a enhancement to the resiliency feature in Office 2010 related to add-ins. This attempts to protect the users from errant add-ins causing issues with Office. However, it can also block legitimate add-ins from operating normally. Microsoft provides a mechanism to flag legitimate add-ins to be excluded from resiliency checks. The following links from Microsoft provides information on how to configure your system to prevent resiliency from blocking the FileHold Office Client.

Support for keeping add-ins enabled

Issues from other add-ins

Many add-ins using .NET can cause a conflict with the FileHold Office Client add-in. The add-in mscoree.dll must be enabled otherwise FOC won't work.

Disabling FileHold Office Client smart messages

If the Smart Messages are disrupting certain types of files, such as a .xla file in Excel, an exception can be added to the FileHold Desktop Application config file. A setting called "FOCIgnoreExtensions" in the FDA.exe.config file contains a list of file extensions that should be ignored by FOC. By default, it contains the "xla" extension. When set to an empty value, XLA files are not ignored. Other extensions, for example "xlam" can be added to this list if necessary.

If you are experiencing other issues, see Desktop Troubleshooting Guide, FileHold Desktop Application - Antivirus and Security Suite Settings - Best Practices, or Internet Explorer Troubleshooting.