Proactively enabling and disabling Addins in Microsoft Office can often help solve a buggy experience with Word, Excel, Outlook and other Microsoft applications that allow Addins.

Sometimes however, an application can be disabled by the Operating System itself. When this occurs, it occurs within “the context of a User account” . This means that it is possible to disable (or have the system automatically disable) an Addin for only one User. This experience can be very frustrating when the User did not want that Addin to be disabled.  Also, any account that is operating under least priviledge (meaing a limited privilege account within the system), may not be allowed to re-enable the Addin.

To Enable Addins for Microsoft Office Programs (when disabled by the system) you must use the RunAs command. The RunAs service is then used to Run the Office program in the “context” of a user account with a higher privilege.

A couple of things are happening here:

1. Even Microsoft Office can limit the ability of a user to control parameters. This is not so much that a User does not have control over their own Word, Excel, or Outlook programs as an example but because “when an Addin becomes disabled, an entry is made in the Registry for that Local Machine”. Registry entries require “privilege” to alter (even from within the menus of Microsoft Office).

2. In earlier versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows 2000) the RunAs command allowed a program to be launched from the Start menu or from the Programs menu using Run as administrator. Windows Vista will require a little more work by either opening Windows Explorer and navigating to the executable (i.e. WINWORD.exe) and then using RunAs from the (right-click) context menu OR by actually creating a shortcut to that executable in the Quick Launch toolbar (where you can again right-click and select RunAs from there).

RunAs can be a little confusing for people who are new to it. This article at the Microsoft Office Web Site explains more about using RunAs together with Microsoft Office

 What do I do if I get a message that the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed? 

In my particular case today, I have an installation of Microsoft Word 2007 in which the “system” has automatically disabled an Addin for Business Contact Manager “BCM” for Microsoft Outlook. This occured because of a fatal failure between Word and the BCM Addin. When trying to re-enable the Addin, the following ERROR pop-up appears:

The connected state of Office Add-Ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed

So to ”enable” the BCM Addin in Microsoft Office Word 2007  (example on Windows Vista) do the following :

• GO TO Start | Computer
• open the hard drive on which the Office Programs were installed
• GO TO Program Files | Microsoft Office | Office12 | right-click on WINWORD.exe |from the context menu select Run as administrator | if User Account Control is active select continue
• Word will launch in the context of the Administrator account
• click on the Office button and from the bottom right corner of the dialog select Word Options
• select Add-Ins
• at the bottom of the Word Options dialog box is the Manage: drop down | select Disabled Items and press the Go button
• select your Addin from the Disabled Items list (i.e highlight it) and click Enable
• click OK until you are out of the Word Options dialog
• close Word and then re-open Word to confirm the Addin has been enabled

Thanks to My Digital Life and the Microsoft Office web site for the help.

thanks for reading

Mark Raborn
WIGITAL