MS Word "the system cannot find the file specified" with Add-In installed

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MS Word "the system cannot find the file specified" with Add-In installed
 
Sharad Patel




Posts: 30
Joined: 2008-04-17
When I try to open a Word document from windows explorer, Word starts with the message "the system cannot find the file specified" (Word 2003 doesn't open the file nor does it display a message). This happens when I have my add-in installed - if I remove the add-in it all works okay. The add-in itself loads okay and works okay and this happens on some machines and not others. The bizarre thing is that if I have several add-ins and I remove some of the others, then this works okay. I don't believe it is an issue with Add-In Express, but some architecture issue with how word loads add-ins and the file opening pipeline - i.e. DDE and some sort of timing issue.

Can you shed some light on this? My add-in might be taking longer to load than some more light-weight ones - and therefore the document gets lost. Is this plausible? For example my workstation had the my add-in, plus the 'Goldmine' add-in, with both installed, I get the issue - if I disable either one of the add-ins, the issue disappears.

Also, if Word is already opened, and I double click on the word doc in explorer, it will load okay. Again, this leads me to think there is a conflict with the time it takes to load add-ins and for Word to do its 'DDE' bit to open the doc.

Any help, pointers, etc are appreciated.
Posted 29 Mar, 2010 06:44:15 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18787
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hi Sharad,

Try initializing your add-in in AddinStartupComplete. Please see Using AddinInitialize or AddinStartupComplete.


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 29 Mar, 2010 06:54:59 Top
Sharad Patel




Posts: 30
Joined: 2008-04-17
Andrei,

Thanks for the response. I have done that but my Office system has other add-ins installed that may also be slowing the process down - therefore this didn't completely solve the issue for me. However I found that disabling the use of DDE for documents opened for Windows Explorer or other apps solved the problem - googling on this issue seems that DDE is at the root of the same problem for lots of other users as well.
Posted 29 Mar, 2010 10:01:23 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18787
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hi Sharad,

May I ask you to publish a link suggesting to disable DDE?


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 29 Mar, 2010 11:54:26 Top
Sharad Patel




Posts: 30
Joined: 2008-04-17
Andrei,

I can't point to any specific link that details this but I have summarised the steps here to disable DDE for the .Doc extension:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click the View All Control Panel Options link, if present.
3. Double-click Folder Options.
4. Click the File Types tab.
5. Click the file type whose association you want to change - .DOC in our case. Click Advanced.
6. Click the action you want to edit, and then click Edit - (in our case this could be the OPEN action).
7. In the dialog that is presented, uncheck the 'Use DDE' checkbox.
8. The 'the application used to perform this action' field should contain:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" "%1"

The only odd thing I noticed is that if I come back later to edit this extension again, the 'Use DDE' field is re-checked but it doesn't make a difference.
Posted 29 Mar, 2010 14:46:37 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18787
Joined: 2006-05-11
Hi Sharad,

Thank you very much!


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 30 Mar, 2010 05:37:08 Top