Problem with button on standard toolbar disappearing for .dot files

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Problem with button on standard toolbar disappearing for .dot files
Problem with button on standard toolbar disappearing for .dot files 
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
Joined: 2005-05-03
Hi there,

I have a bit of an issue that has been raised by one of our clients which I'm hoping you can help me out on or at leat help me improve my understanding of the causes of the issues.

We have an Office addin based on the Add-In-Express .NET components which adds a button to the standard toolbar. This button is part of a document management solution and is used to save documents to our DMS.

One of our clients has a bunch of word templates that existed before they installed our office addin. When you open one of these templates it appears that word uses the .dot file instead of the normal.dot and thus the button which we've added to the standard toolbar disappears. This leads to my first question: Am I correct about what Word is doing here?

2nd point, when a document based on one of these templates is created it has the same problem with the toolbar disappearing. I assume for similar reasons?!

I have found that if you open one of these templates and then open a new document our toolbar button appears in the new document. If you then switch back to the template word puts the button on the toolbar of the template. If you choose to close and save the .dot file the toolbar button is stored in it and the problem goes away. I have suggested this to the client as a solution to the problem however they have indicated that this is a long process for them as they have thousands of templates and they seem unwilling to do this for each template.

The client has asked if it's possible to store the toolbar button in a template other then the Normal.dot file. I assume that it's not because Word just uses Normal.dot for all info related to the Standard toolbar. Is this correct?

Do you have any suggestions as to how I can resolve this problem for our client?

Thanks in advance,


Michael McMahon
Posted 13 Nov, 2006 18:37:37 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Michael.

1. Yes, corect. ADX always saves its command bars and controls in the Normal.dot template. This template is always loaded when Word starts. So, your button should be visible anyway except if you have changed its position manually using the Customize dialog. Do you use the latest ADX version?

2. Yes, Word saves all standard controls to the Normal.dot.
Do you add the button to the Standard or the custom command bar?

P.S. Note that we take up your forum requests in the order we receive them.
Besides, it may take us some time to investigate your issue. Please be sure we will let you know as soon as the best possible solution is found.

Posted 14 Nov, 2006 08:10:19 Top
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
Joined: 2005-05-03
Hi Sergey,

That's interesting that Word always loads the normal.dot file. I guess there must be some other reason the toolbar button is disappearing from the toolbar. Any thoughts on why this would be the case?

As I mentioned it only happens when users load these old .dot files and/or any files created from them. It must be something to do with the way Word handles .dot files.

In answer to question 1. I'm not sure if I'm using the latest version of the ADX components but I will double check on this.

With regard to question 2, yes we add our toolbar button to the standard toolbar generally. I think it's only in Outlook that we have a button that doesn't appear on the standard toolbar. We did this because of a problem with Word refreshing custom toolbars when you have more then one document open (where the toolbar would flash every time you type a character).

I look forward to any more assistance you can offer with this as our client is quite concerned about this issue.

Regards,


Michael McMahon

Posted 15 Nov, 2006 19:55:11 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Michael.

Could you please add the button to a custom toolbar and test the add-in with the problematic Word templates again?
Posted 16 Nov, 2006 08:20:04 Top
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
Joined: 2005-05-03
Hi Sergey,

Yes, using a custom toolbar seems to resolve the issue. Of course using this Office addin means that we are going back to a situation where we will have issues with the toolbar button flickering again.

Can you think of any other work arounds?


Mike
Posted 21 Nov, 2006 22:30:47 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Michael.

Did you try to add the temporary button to the Standard command bar?
Posted 22 Nov, 2006 17:04:35 Top
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
Joined: 2005-05-03
Hi Sergey,

We have certainly tried putting the toolbar button on the standard toolbar. That was the configuration we had until recently when in this discussion you suggested we put it in a custom toolbar.

The temporary property of the toolbar button wasn't set to True though. Do you think that would make a difference?

Mike
Posted 19 Dec, 2006 21:49:27 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Mike.

Yes, please try to use the temporary controls. In this case the button should be added whenever the host application starts.
Posted 20 Dec, 2006 13:02:55 Top