Microsoft Office Word OneNote Support Team Blog

Office 2013 VBA component stops functioning

2013-04-26T15:02:00Z

We are seeing a few cases where the VBA component of the Office 2013 apps stop functioning. The applications are working properly when installed. Then a few days later VBA buttons no longer work. Here are the scenarios that we
have seen:

Word

The Macro button is not greyed out but when trying to run or record a macro they receive the following
message, “The function you are attempting to run contains macros or content that requires macro language support"

PowerPoint

The Visual Basic, and Macros options are disabled/greyed on the ribbon.
When opening presentations with VBA code, the user receives the following message:
"The document contains macros. Macro language support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document read-only?"

Access:

When running wizards the receive the following error, “This feature isn't installed, or has been disabled"
When opening VBA editor the user receives “"Microsoft Access is unable to load the Visual Basic for
Applications dynamic-link library (dll) Vbe7" when opening the Visual Basic Editor (VBE)”

Excel

The Visual Basic, Macros and Record Macro options are disabled/greyed on the ribbon.
When opening workbooks with VBA code, the user receive the following message, “The Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA) macros in this workbook are corrupted and have been deleted."

In most cases repairing MS Office fixes the issue.

What we believe is happening is there is a registry cleaner or system maintenance type application removing some our registry keys that we
need for VBA to run successfully. In the above scenarios when the MS Office application was installed the VBA worked properly.

Word documents using Information Rights Management (IRM) may hang when opening

2012-08-24T22:01:00Z

We have seen reports of Word documents hanging whenever trying to open a document that uses Information Rights Management (IRM) after you apply MS12-057. Additionally, the reports go on to say that a new file may hang when you try to apply IRM protection after installing this security update.

If you suspect you are running into this error, you should be able to resolve the problem by deleting all files in the following path:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\DRM

also, make sure to rename or delete the following registry key (if you choose to delete the key, be sure to back it up first):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\DRM - delete the CachedCorpLicenseServer value

and delete or rename all entries under (if you choose to delete the key, be sure to back it up first):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\DRM\ServiceLocations

Microsoft has not confirmed whether the hanging behavior is actually a direct result of installing MS12-057, and the problem is still under investigation.

"Unspecified Automation Error" after applying MS12-060

2012-08-16T18:43:00Z

MS12-060 is a security update that was released Tuesday, August 14, 2012. This update replaced MS12-027. Some may be seeing "Unspecified Automation Error" when running your Microsoft Office VBA code after installing MS12-060.

Update: We have redeployed the MS12-060 update that contains the fix for this issue automatically built in. The update is now available from the Microsoft download center.

These KB articles have been updated with mention of the workarounds, a fix it package and a link to download the new update. You do not need to install the original update in order to install the new update:

2007
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2687441

2010
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2597986

Office Sustained Engineering Blog has been updated with a resolution.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2012/08/24/ms12-060-not-initiating-with-certain-controls.aspx

For more information on MS12-060, review the complete security bulletin:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-060 - Critical
Vulnerability in Windows Common Controls Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2720573)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/MS12-060

Deleting orphaned list templates in a document.

2012-07-13T22:50:00Z

From time to time, we come across support cases where customers need to clean up the list templates in a document. While working with a document, there are situations when you will want to know how many list tempates are currently in use and when you check that value, it is a much larger number than what you expect. Before discussing how to get the correct number, I want to mention that I am assuming you have at least some type of understanding about list templates and the scenarios that will put a document into a state where it contains un-used list templates. There are a few different articles on the internet that discuss list numbering and list templates. A regular search for these terms should get you some of the background information related to this particular information.

Note: This particular blog post is related to the Open Xml (.docx) file format and will not address the problem with binary (.doc) files.

Having said that, we can now start discussing what needs to happen if you want to remove these un-used or orphaned list templates. This is a manual process and I am also making further assumptions that you have some understanding of opening a Word document and modifying the underlying xml files. I will use the following document for this example, which at first contains two list templates.

To achieve an orphaned list template, I will delete everything in List #2 so only the first list remains and then save the document. It now looks like the following:

If I query the object model for the number of list templates (ActiveDocument.ListTemplates.Count), I will get a value of 2 instead of 1. To get the actual count of list templates currently in use, we first need to rename the file to ".zip" and have a look at its contents. After zipping my document, I can navigate to the "word" folder and this is what I find:

The two files of importance are "document.xml" and "numbering.xml". We will not make any changes to "document.xml"; we just need to look through it to find out what list templates are currently in use. As you can see in the following screenshot, this document has only one "numId" in use with a value of 1. It does appear three times, one for each list item but I only need to know if the style is used at least once. You also need to keep in mind that if you are using list numbering in other parts of the document (like headers, footers, etc...), you will need to repeat this check for each of those xml files. The process will be the same in those files, so you still are just looking for "numId" values.

Now that I know what "numId" values are used in the document, the next thing I will do is look through the file "numbering.xml" so I can see what orphaned list templates are still listed. Here is what mine looks like:

I collapsed the "abstractNum" tags to make it easier to show the relationship between the "numId" and "abstractNumId". As you can see in the screenshot, the document is still listing both list templates in the document. Since my search through "document.xml" only showed the numId = 1, any other numId can be deleted along with its related abstractNum tag.

After deleting the "num" tag with a numId = 2 and the "abstractNum" tag with an abstractNumId = 0, I can save the "numbering.xml" file and place it back into my Word document. You should now have a document that has the correct number of list templates.

One thing to keep in mind is that, while this method does work it could be very time consuming on larger documents. There might be other sites/blogs that have information about using VBA or some other approach to automate this type of clean up in a Word document. There are even some approaches to manually modifying the document in Word to achieve the same results. The goal of this post was to try and provide another option for users to choose from regarding this particular issue.

Lastly, I spent the weekend writing an automated version of this blog using the Open Xml SDK to see if that works and it does, so it would be possible to get this working on a larger scale programmatically.

Deploy custom templates in Microsoft Office.

2012-01-03T16:36:00Z

When it comes to creating Word documents, everything starts with the template. You cannot create a document without one and even though the Word application does provide users with many different templates to use by default, there are many scenarios where custom templates will need to be used.

Since many people create their own set of templates, they also like the idea of having these templates show up in the interface of Word so that it is easier for users to find and create documents. It is possible to add your own set of custom templates to the interface of Word and the links below will provide you with the information necessary to create and deploy these templates. The purpose of this blog post is to provide some supplemental information regarding that particular TechNet article to address a couple common questions that get asked while setting up this behavior.

Note: These templates should look the same in all Office apps that take advantage of this functionality. For the context of this blog post though, I am going to be specifically talking about the Microsoft Word application.

Word 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178976(office.12).aspx

Word 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178976.aspx

At this point, assuming you have successfully deployed the custom templates per the TechNet article, you should now have something similar to the above screenshots. You should also notice that the registry contains some changes that you did not make. In the article, the only changes in the registry were to one of the following locations.

Word 2007 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers
Word 2010 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers

However, if you went through the article correctly and have opened Word to verify that templates do indeed display as expected, you will notice another registry key value that was created at the following location.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Spotlight\Content

This location in the registry is a cache of the information from the custom xml file you created. Word will use these values and even though they are not technically required, they are necessary because if you delete the Provider (for this example it's Contoso) under the Content hive, Office will recreate the key the next time an Office application launches.

One of the common questions we get regarding these custom template is about the "startdate" and "enddate" registry keys. These values are from the xml file you created and are added to the cache. When an Office application opens, it checks these registry values for each provider and depending on what the current day is, decides if it should display the templates.

With the "startdate" key, Office will only display the templates if this value is in the past or equals the current day. The "enddate" value is also checked and if the value is a date in the future, the application does nothing and displays the same information from the cache. If the "enddate" is a value less than or equal to the current day however, it does not display the templates.

Where this can cause concerns is when changes are made to the xml file that was initially created but the "enddate" is still in the future. The problem is that these changes will not get updated in the display for Word, because it will only check for updates to the xml if the "enddate" value is a date in the past.

This brings us to the other common question we get about this feature. How can the templates/display be updated? As far as I can tell, there are only two possible workarounds for updating the content.

If you know you will be making continuous changes, you could set the "enddate" to a value that is not very far in the future. Then each time you update your xml file, push the date out a little bit farther.
When you push out changes to the xml, you can also delete the cached provider key and Office should retrieve the new xml and update the cache the next time Word is launched.

How to disable the Save to SkyDrive functionality in OneNote 2010.

2011-12-01T01:01:00Z

We have been getting a few support cases lately dealing with finding a way to disable the Save to SkyDrive functionality for OneNote. Since it seems like this is something other people might also find useful, we decided to create this blog post to explain how this can be accomplished.

The first thing to mention before we get into how this will work is to explain the different entry points for SkyDrive functionality in OneNote. First, after installing OneNote and running the application for the first time, you will be presented with the following dialog.

Second, there is a section in the backstage where you can share your notebooks on SkyDrive. This feature is found in the Share tab of the backstage under the heading "Web Location" and should look similar to the following screenshot.

This feature allows you to login with your Windows Live credentials and you will have access to your SkyDrive folders out on the web. Many companies feel the need to prevent this type of internet access in their environments, hence the need to disable this functionality.

Keep in mind, the following information is somewhat geared towards IT admins, so I will be making a few assumptions along the way.

Since most admins make use of group policies (GPO's) in their environment, this should be a simple task. Assuming you have already installed the group policy templates for Office (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=18968 ), you can open the group policy editor and navigate to:

In this section, you can "Enable" the item "Do not allow Save to Web integration". Once this policy is in place, you should notice that the "Web Location:" section, in the above screenshot is no longer available and users will not be able to sign in to their SkyDrive account.

If you would rather just set a registry key, you can use the following.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\Common\WebIntegration

DWORD = WebIntegrationEnabled

Value = 0

Note: It is important to mention that this will disable the functionality for OneNote and the rest of the Office applications.

Now the next item to discuss is the dialog presented to users the first time they boot the OneNote application. This dialog can be disabled with the following regkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\OneNote\WebServiceProvider

DWORD = DisableSkydriveSetupOnFirstBoot

Value = 1

The last thing I want to mention is how to test if this key worked. The first key, which disables the functionality in the backstage, should be an easy check and you can open the application to see if it worked. The first boot check will be a little bit trickier, since the user has probably clicked on the dialog and it no longer prompts the user with the option about where to open the first notebook.

When a user makes a selection in that first boot dialog and they click on continue, the following registry key is added.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\OneNote

DWORD = FirstBootStatus

The value is not important because simply deleting the key will cause OneNote to prompt with the first boot dialog the next time you open the application. That is unless you have enabled the DisableSkydriveSetupOnFirstBoot key, in which case you should see the expected behavior and OneNote will open without the prompt.

Error when opening a Word 2007 or 2010 document “The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag”

2011-03-24T22:31:00Z

We've recently noticed an issue where documents are becoming corrupt after making edits and saving the file. There have been multiple forum threads related to this particular issue and the purpose of this blog is to try and give you some ideas for how to correct the problem.

The one disclaimer worth mentioning is that this is not a 100% fix for all corrupt documents, nor will it fix all documents that give you the specific error message noted below. The idea is to try and give you some options for getting your document back to a state where you can make edits/changes.

Problem Description:

Opening a Word document gives you an error "The file <filename> cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.

The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag. Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 2, Column: 129414"

If you came to this blog from the FixIt KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2528942, you can use the steps below to try and edit the document so that the issue does not keep re-occurring when you make more edits to the document and save the file. After running the FixIt you should be able open the document in Word without getting an error message.

The problem however, still remains in the structure of the document. Typically it's somewhere in an equation or a textbox. If you make any edit to the document that doesn't correct the behavior and you save the document, you will end up with the document still giving you the error message. It's important to keep in mind that the FixIt solution won't prevent the problem from re-occurring. It can only put the document into a state where Word will be able to open the document.

Next, we get to the workarounds and if you didn't get to this blog post from the KB article, you can go to the article referenced above and run the FixIt solution to correct the document. The KB article also has more information about this particular issue. Once you have the document in a state where you can open it in Word, you can then proceed to the workarounds to try and correct the document.

Possible Workarounds:

Grouping objects. These steps are done with Word 2010 in mind because the Selection Pane was introduced making it easier to see all the objects on the page and if you are using Word 2007 or earlier, it will be a little bit more difficult to select and group each individual object.
1. To start with, after opening the fixed document you will want to turn on the Selection pane. This can be found in the Home tab of the ribbon. In the Editing group of the Home tab, click the Select dropdown and then click Selection Pane....
2. This will open a task pane on the right side of the document and allow you to view the different objects on the currently active page.
3. Hold CTRL and select each Text Box in the selection pane.
4. Now we want to group all these objects together. Under Drawing Tools, on the Format tab, in the Arrange group, click Group, and then click Group.
5. Once you have all objects grouped on each page, you can save the document with a new name.
Save the document in the RTF file format. This should work for Word 2007 and Word 2010.If the first workaround didn't work, you can try saving the document as an RTF file. This method seems to consistently work in the example documents I've seen the exhibit the problem behavior. It's not an ideal solution and the file sizes get quite large, but if you need to edit the file and can't find any other way of correcting the document, this might be your only option.
1. After you open the document in Word, click File and then click Save (for Word 2007 click the Office Button and then click Save As)
2. In the Save As dialog, click on the Save as type: dropdown and select Rich Text Format (*.rtf), then click Save.
  1. You could also save the document in the binary (.doc) format, but I've seen that the shapes tend to get moved around and shifted so they don't line up quite right so it's up to you if you want to use .doc or .rtf.
  2. Both can work, but rtf seems to be more consistent and have the least visual changes in the document.
If you are running into problems where the steps above do not work, you can upload the file to an online share and send me the link. I'm working on adjusting the FixIt solution so that it will fix the document and these manual steps will not be necessary, but until then you will have to rely on the KB article, this blog or some of the online forums for help getting the document fixed.

Lastly, there have been a lot of forum threads related to this particular problem and I would like to say a huge "Thank You!" to the MVP's and everyone else who has been helping people get their documents fixed.

Office 2010 Web Application Workshops and experts coming soon to a city near you…

2011-02-23T22:18:57Z

Thinking about setting up Microsoft Office 2010 Web Applications in your environment? Curious about Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word web applications?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, you should consider attending one of the Office 2010 Web Application workshops that will be delivered in cities around the country in the coming months.

The Office 2010 Web Applications workshop is designed to provide you with information regarding best practices on installation, manage, and usage of the Office web applications of PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote 2010.

Key Focus Areas:

· Setup of Office web applications

· Server Architecture

· The Companions

· Introduction to Excel Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote web applications

IT Professionals responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting of Office installations. Application-specific and/or help desk-type issues are not included in the scope of this offering.

Delivery Dates and Locations:
April 5-6, 2011 – Irving, TX
April 19-20, 2011 – Irvine, CA
May 3-4, 2011 – Downers Grove, IL
May 17-18, 2011 – New York, NY
June 1-2, 2011 – Tampa, FL
New dates and locations will be announced here as they become available.

Pricing:
$1000 USD per person

To register or for more information:

• To register online, visit http://www.microsoft.com/events, click the Find Events and Webcasts link, and perform an advanced search using the following EventIDs or keywords "Office 2010 Deployment":

o    Las Colinas: 1032479205
o    Irvine, CA: : 1032479318
o    Downers Grove, IL: 1032479319
o    New York, NY: 1032479324
o    Tampa, FL: 1032479329

• To register via email, send mail to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com and include the following information:

o    Company Name
o    Attendee Name
o    Physical Address
o    Phone Number
o    Number of Attendees
o    Desired Event Location/Date

• To register via phone, call 1-888-875-9071

• Email inquiries to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com

After Installing KB2251419, Microsoft Word 2007 application is crashing

2010-08-31T16:11:00Z

We recently released a security update KB2251419.

MS10-056: Description of the security update for Word 2007: August 10, 2010

After installing this security patch, our customers are complaining about Word 2007 application is crashing.

This issue happens when you have an “ActiveX control” in Microsoft Word Template and you are creating new document based on that Word Template.

Currently this issue is under investigation.

The only workaround at this point we have for this issue is to remove ActiveX control from your Word Template.

We do not recommend uninstalling security update KB2251419.

UPDATE about this issue

We have fix available for this issue now. This fix can be downloaded from following link

2449499 Description of the Office Word 2007 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp): October 26, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2449499

For Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policies, Click here

June 2010 Cumulative updates are shipped for Word 2010 and Word 2007

2010-07-06T22:55:15Z

June 2010 Cumulative updates are shipped. Following are the KBs for Word 2010 and Word 2007

Description of the Word 2010 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2204026/

Description of the Office Word 2007 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp, Wordconv-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983313/

Description of the Office Word 2007 hotfix package (Mso-x-none.msp, Word-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2203971/

Issue fixed for Word 2007

Consider the following scenario. A Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 user sends an email message to a Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 user who does not use Word as the email editor. The Office Outlook 2007 user uses a list format that cannot be represented in HTML other than with plain text. Then, the Outlook 2003 user replies to the email message and inserts a new paragraph at the beginning of one of the numbered paragraphs. In this scenario, the Office Outlook 2007 user cannot see the new paragraph.
When you send an HTML-based email message from Office Outlook 2007, the size of the email message grows when you reply or forward the email message.

Consider the following scenario:
- You have an Office Word document that contains two or more punctuation marks in a row.
- You change the punctuation marks in the document.
- You save the changed document as a new file.
In this scenario, you find that the changes that Office Word 2007 marks are more than just the changed punctuation marks when you compare the two documents at the character level by using Office Word 2007.
Office Outlook 2007 stops responding when you receive a certain HTML email message.
In Office Word 2007, you find that the bullets and numbering are missing when you open an Office Word 2003 document that contains bullets and numbering.
Consider the following scenario:
- You add the Update fields before printing object for Office Word 2007 in a Group Policy object (GPO).
- In Office Outlook 2007, you print an email message that contains an image.
- The email message that you print is in HTML format.
In this scenario, the printed image is scaled incorrectly.
After you apply the hotfix that is described in Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article 981045, the Edit Links to Files function requires a long time to open in Office Word 2007.
After you apply the update that is described in Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) 978398, the following issue still occurs in Office Word 2007:

You open an Office Word 2007 document by using Windows Internet Explorer. When you click Enable Macros, you receive the following error message:

Can't exit design mode because Control ' Name ' cannot be created.

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
978398 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978398/ ) Description of the Office Word 2007 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp, Wordconv-x-none.msp): February 23, 2010
In Office Word 2007, the numbered outline list item that contains a style separator or a hidden paragraph mark does not display in the Cross Reference dialog box.
When you apply a custom XSL Transformation (XSLT) template to an Office Word 2007 document by using the Document.TransformDocument method in the Word object model, the footnotes and the endnotes are not added to the document if the XSLT template contains a number level in the transform.
After you save a file in which you added a comment to a quick part that is inserted for a document property in Office Word 2007, you receive the following error message when you open the file again:

The file filename cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.
Details: Unspecified error.
Location: Part: /Word/document.xml, Line:#, Column:####.
When you print a document in Office Word 2007, the text that is in the drop-down form field is printed in a big font size and the letters of the text are squeezed together. This issue occurs if the following conditions are true:
- The operating system that you use is Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.
- The document is in a right-to-left format.
- The drop-down form field contains some left-to-right text, such as Latin text.
- This is the first time that you try to print in the current session of Office Word 2007.
Consider the following scenario:
- You copy a shape in a Visio file that is stored on an Universal Naming Convention (UNC) share.
- In Office Word 2007, you select Paste Special, you click Paste link in the Paste Special dialog box, you select Microsoft Visio Drawing Object under As, and then you click OK.
  
  Note At this point, the Linked Visio Object option appears when you right-click the pasted shape.
- You save, and then you close the Office Word 2007 file.
- You open the Office Word 2007 file again.
In this scenario, the Linked Visio Object option disappears when you right-click the pasted shape.

Issue Fixed for Word 2010

When you print from Word 2010 by using the scaling function of the print driver, you receive the following warning message:
The margins of section 1 are set outside the printable area of the page. Do you want to continue?
After you click Yes, the scaling is incorrect and some text is cut when the document is printed. This problem occurs when the document size differs from the default paper size