Excel add in not loading at startup

Question

My third party add-ins are no longer starting automatically with Excel.

The issue is the same as described here: Excel COM add is not loading during startup and have to add it manually

However it seems the solution is no longer valid.

I did find a registry entry for [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\MyAddinName] and it did have a LoadBehavior entry set to 3, but it does not seem to be working.

Once Excel is loaded, I can check the add-in and it works normally, but it has to be done every time.

I did recently update to Version 2002 (Build 12527.20612) and wondering if this version changed addin loading?

Update The add-ins do not have any problems and do not crash or become dissabled. They simply do not start with Excel. Going to add-ins and checking the appropriate ones works every time.

Answer 1

Instead of enabling the add-in every time Excel is started, you need to find the cause which leads to disabling the add-in...

Microsoft Office applications can disable VSTO Add-ins that behave unexpectedly. If an application does not load your VSTO Add-in, the application might have hard disabled or soft disabled your VSTO Add-in.

Hard disabling can occur when a VSTO Add-in causes the application to close unexpectedly. It might also occur on your development computer if you stop the debugger while the Startup event handler in your VSTO Add-in is executing.

Soft disabling can occur when a VSTO Add-in produces an error that does not cause the application to unexpectedly close. For example, an application might soft disable a VSTO Add-in if it throws an unhandled exception while the Startup event handler is executing.

When you re-enable a soft-disabled VSTO Add-in, the application immediately attempts to load the VSTO Add-in. If the problem that initially caused the application to soft disable the VSTO Add-in has not been fixed, the application will soft disable the VSTO Add-in again.

So, I'd suggest enabling logging and find which line of code fires an exception at runtime and why the add-in is automatically disabled. See How to: Re-enable a VSTO Add-in that has been disabled for more information.

If you are not the add-in developer, I'd suggest contacting them then.

Answer 2

After some searching through the registry I found a new location with the add-in name.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\MyAddinName] And there was a LoadBehavior set to 0 and when I set it to 3 the add-ins load at startup as before.

This seems to be a new registry location for add-in startup. I am using the 32-bit version. Can anybody check if the 64 bit version also has a new location?