Toolbar missing after ALLUSERS-installation

[Stefan Rauchegger]

Hi NG,

I have made a VB6-COMAddin for Outlook which is installed in
ALLUsers-Mode. The necessary registry-settings are included into the
setup-package.
They are installed to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\
When starting OL after the installation on some machines my toolbar is
missing whereas on other machines everything works as expected.

(Recently this problem was fixed, when normal.dot of Word was changed
- really strange)

IMHO, OL needs to refresh outcmd.dat or something else.

I've also heard of problems, when there are AddIn-entries in both,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

How can I force OL to refresh this "toolbar-cache" ?

TIA

Stefan
(Redemption-User)

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You can't force Outlook to clear or rebuild the menu/toolbar cache,
which is in a file named outcmd.dat. You could delete that file but it
will only be rebuilt when you exit and restart Outlook.

Are you creating your custom items with Temporary = True?

The same addin should never ever be registered in both HKLM and HKCU,
that's a recipe for problems.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Your add-in should be creating the toolbar every time it starts. If you are
not seeing this, then my guess is that the add-in is disabled due to an
unhandled error or other problem. In Outlook 2003, you can check Help |
About Microsoft Outlook | Disabled Items. Or check the registry entries and
see if LoadBehavior is something other than 3.

 

[Stefan Rauchegger]

They are created Temporary=True, but perhaps in the wrong event.

First, I used the VB6-Wizard to create this project and used the
preset Event-Handlers.
I created the temporary toolbar in the
IDTExtensibility2_OnConnection-EventHandler.
Is it better to do this in IDTExtensibility2_OnStartupComplete?

Or should I use the Events of AddinInstance?

I save toolbarposition in OnBeginShutDown, is this the best way?

TIA

Stefan

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I use Explorer and Inspector wrapper classes so I can handle events
and button clicks in multiple open Explorers and Inspectors. I may
enable/disable a button/menu/toolbar based on the
Explorer.BeforeFolderSwitch event also. I never instantiate a button
or menu in On_Connection or any of the other IDTExtensibility2 or
application-wide events.

I'd strongly recommend downloading and studying the ItemsCB COM addin
template (VB6) from the Resources page at www.microeye.com It
illustrates COM addin best practices and shows workarounds for common
Outlook COM addin problems. It also illustrates an Explorer wrapper.
I'd also look at the information about AddInMon from the Resources
page, it addresses another severe Outlook COM addin problem.