Help! Addin keeps getting disabled in Outlook 2003

[Sanjay Singh]

I have an addin that works as expected in Outlook 2000. One of the users
recently upgraded to Outlook 2003 and has the following problem.

Each time he uses the addin he has to first go to the Help menu, then to
About Microsoft Outlook and click on Disabled Items to revive the program.
Then he has to close Outlook and reopen it.
Then he gets the addin and it works fine.
But then the next time he starts the computer, he gets an error message
durring start up that says Microsoft Outlook has encountered a fatal flaw
with the addin and will need to disable it. This puts the program back into
the Disabled Items location until he retreives it again.

There is NO error message caused by the addin at any point.
Please Help. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Sanjay

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

These are symptoms that the add-in is encountering a runtime error, but is
not providing proper error handling (which might include a message to the
user). The issue needs to be referred to the developer of the add-in.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Does the problem happen when the user accesses settings for that addin using
the Tools, Options dialog and are they running a script stopper from Norton
or McAfee? It could be using CreateObject in the property page OCX and that
combination will crash Outlook in the script stopper and get the addin
blamed and disabled.

 

[Sanjay Singh]

I am the developer of the application.
How can I know where the error is occuring?
Outlook does not crash or display any error at all. However the message
comes up when Outlook starts the next time after the addin is used.

Sanjay

 

[Sanjay Singh]

I have not coded anything in the addin that uses the the Tools Options
dialog ... yet. That was going to be the next thing I implement. Is there
anything that I will need to be careful about?

Thanks
Sanjay

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Unless you have added your own error handling and logging scheme, it is not
possible to know where the error is occurring. Make sure every procedure
includes error handling.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Sanjay Singh]

I was afraid you would say something like that. Sigh ...

Sanjay

PS: Thank you for the fantastic help that you provide in the Outlook
newsgroups. We would be lost without you and the other MVPs.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Yes, if you use CreateObject("Outlook.Application") to get an Outlook object
in your OCX (property page) and the user is running a script stopper from
Norton or McAfee then Outlook will be crashed by the script stopper and your
addin will get blamed for it and get disabled by Outlook.

In the case of McAfee you can tell it to trust certain code like DLL's
and/or OCX's and that usually prevents the problem. With Norton you are out
of luck. There is no way to tell it to trust anything and unless they add
your code to their internal trusted list (and don't hold your breath for
that) it will merrily go about crashing Outlook.

The workaround is not to use CreateObject but to get your Outlook reference
from PropertyPageSite.Application. That gives you the Outlook object and
won't cause the script stopper to crash Outlook and get your program
disabled.