Guest Blogger: Harold Kless

If you try to edit an Office file (Word, PowerPoint or Excel) from a SharePoint 2010 Document Library while using an iPad with MS Office applications installed, the file will not open and there is an error “there is no SharePoint Foundation application available to open
the app.”

SharePoint 2010 requires a plugin or active X to launch client applications, and neither of those are allowed on the iOS platform. SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online support protocol handlers that work with iPad.

To work around this behavior:

Option 1 – Add a Place within the application that will connect to the SharePoint Document Library.

1. To do this open any of the installed Microsoft Office applications
   (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).
2. On the opening window choose Add a Place.
3. In the Add a Place window click on SharePoint Site URL
4. In the SharePoint URL window enter the url or internet address of the SharePoint Document Library.
5. Click Next - when prompted enter the username and password.

Option 2 – download a copy of the file

1. When in the Document Library click on Download a copy.
2. The document will be displayed in the browser window with the option to choose how to open in the appropriate application.
3. When the file opens it will be read only with the option to edit and save.

After installing Office 2013 with Service Pack 1 from the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) with a customized MSP file using the Office Customization Tool (OCT), Lync and OneDrive for Business are not installed.

This can also affect the Power Map and PowerPivot for Excel Add-ins 

Please review the following blog for workarounds and resolutions.

Lync 2013 and OneDrive for Business are not installed when installing Office 2013 with Service Pack 1

http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2014/03/21/lync-2013-and-onedrive-for-business-are-not-installed-when-installing-office-2013-with-service-pack-1.aspx

Note: This only affects MSI installs

Issue

While using a VPN connection with Office 2013, users have reported that they are unable to connect to the internet within Office, causing some Office 2013 functionality not to work as expected.

Scenarios we have seen include: 
1.   Word 2013 unable to insert online pictures

ERROR:  "You need an internet connection to insert online pictures"

2.  Office Account Connected Services shows no internet connectivity

ERROR:    "NO INTERNET CONNECTION  Connect to the Internet to add or manage services"

3.  Attempting to launch help via F1 will bring up the Help interface, but it will report that the client is not connected to the internet

4. Attempting to access SharePoint or Check Out Documents from SharePoint results in errors such as:

        "Cannot checkout any document on SharePoint 2013 without internet connection"
        "Unable to connect right now. Check network and try again"
   

Additional Symptoms:

Checking the status of the network adapters in the Windows Network and Sharing Center will show that the VPN adapter does not have internet access.

Cause

Two terms to define first:
NLA – Network Location Awareness
NCSI – Network Connection Status Indicator

Customers have reported this issue using VPN solutions from both Juniper Networks and Palo Alto Networks.  We are sure there are other VPN clients that we don’t know about that are also impacted.

There is a service running on each Windows 7 machine that is called “Network Location Awareness”.  This service is responsible for determining the state of the network connections on the machine.  The information about the network connections is stored and accessed by the service “Network List Manager”.   Applications like Office 2013 can implement the Network List Manager interface to be able to get the state of the computer network connections and what connectivity each adapter has.  This allows the application to simplify their code and simply “ask the OS” what the network state is. 

For the customer reported issues, the third party VPN clients in use happen to not define a default gateway.  This may display as a default gateway of 0.0.0.0 in the ipconfig output.  This is not really an issue for typical networking.  Customers may notice that they can get to network resources, and they do have connectivity to the internet.  The problem here is that NCSI depends on the default gateway to decide if it should “probe” the network connection to decide if it has an internet connection.  The way that NCSI probes the network is it attempts to connect to www.msftncsi.com and retrieve a file called ncsi.txt.  If it can retrieve that file, it marks the connection as having internet access.  When the VPN adapter connection connects, and NCSI detects that a connection was made on an adapter interface.  NCSI will attempt to probe the connection, but since there is no default gateway on the VPN adapter it attempts to send the probe packets out the adapter with a default gateway and that fails since the VPN connection is active.  When this probe attempt fails, NCSI marks the adapter as having LOCAL connectivity.  Office 2013 is checking for INTERNET connectivity before attempting to connect to the online functionality such as online pictures or F1 HELP resources.

Status
To resolve this issue, install the hotfix that is described in the article below.

2964643 Third-party VPN client stops Internet connectivity in Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2964643/EN-US
 

(Updated Dec 2013)

After installing the October 2013 update (KB 2825655) for Excel 2013,  PowerPivot is unable to be used.

Examples of errors you will receive when trying to work within existing PowerPivot workbooks or launching the PowerPivot Window to create a new one are below.

ERRORS:

 "We couldn't get data from the Data Model. Here's the error message we got: Invalid pointer array"

 "PowerPivot is unable to load the Data Model"

At this time, the only resolution to this issue is to uninstall update KB 2825655    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825655/EN-US

Microsoft is working on a resolution. Watch the blog for updates on when a fix is available for this issue.



*** UPDATE : Hotfix Available ***

To resolve this issue, you can request a hotfix from the link below.

Hello everyone

We have seen several reports of Excel crashing when you scroll down, even on a brand-new sheet. The Application Event log points to a crash in OSF.dll.

We have found that at least one cause of this particular crash is a conflict with Avast! Antivirus. Essentially, if you install Avast! and then open any workbook, Excel will crash if you scroll down using the scroll bar or the mouse wheel. This issue only occurs if you are logged in using a Microsoft Account (previously known as Live ID).

Unfortunately, the crash continues to happen even if you uninstall Avast! and run an online repair.

UPDATE:

Avast! has posted an update to their Antivirus programs that resolves this issue. It is dated November 11, 2013. Once you install the new version, obtained from http://www.avast.com, you must do the following to resolve the crash:

1. Reboot your machine (the last step of removing Avast!)
2. Click on the File Tab, and click Options.
3. Click Trust Center and then Trust Center Settings.
4. Click Trusted App Catalogs, and then click the Clear button.

After you do this and restart Excel, the crash should not occur.