How to enable disabled add-ins in excel

This Technote is based on Controller 10.3.1 with Excel 2013.

• The instructions may need to be altered slightly for different environments.

Choose the method easiest for you:

Method #1 (GUI)

1. Launch Excel

2. Click 'File - Options':

3. Click section 'Add-ins':

4. Ensure that 'Manage' is set to 'COM Add-ins', and click 'Go':

5. Modify the box 'Cognos Controller Link for Microsoft Excel':

• Tick = enabled
• Unticked = disabled

 6. Click OK.

Method #2 (Registry key)

1. Logon to the 'bad' client device, using the same Windows userID as the 'bad' user

2. Click: START - RUN

3. Type: regedit

 5. Double-click on the entry: LoadBehavior

 6. Modify the value, for example:

• 0 = always disabled (blocked)
• 1 = enabled
• 2 = The add-in is configurable by the user and not blocked by the "Block all unmanaged add-ins" policy
• 3 = always enabled (recommended for most customers)

7. Test.

[{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SS9S6B","label":"IBM Cognos Controller"},"Component":"","Platform":[{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"10.3.1","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB10","label":"Data and AI"}}]

You can use add-ins in Excel to fulfill some complex task. And in this article, we will introduce how to add and disable add-ins in Excel.

If you need to use add-ins in Excel, you need to add and activate it into Excel. On the other hand, if you don’t need to use add-ins, you can also disable it. Here we will demonstrate the steps to add and disable add-ins in Excel.

Add Add-Ins

1. Click “File” in the ribbon.
2. And then click the button “Options”.
   
3. In the “Excel Options” window, choose the option “Add-ins”.
4. Next choose the type of add-ins in the “Manage” textbox. Here we choose the “Excel Add-ins” as an example”.
   
5. Next click the button “Go” next to the “Manage”.
6. And then the window of “Add-Ins” will pop up. In this window, check the option that you need. Here we check the “Analysis ToolPak” in the window. If you need to install other add-ins, you can click the button “Browse” to add it. Besides, some add-ins require running installation packages. You need to run it in your computer.

1. After that, click the button “OK”.
2. Now you can come back and check the result. The “Analysis ToolPak” will be added in the tab of “Data”. Thus, here click the tab “Data” in the ribbon. You can see that the add-in has already appeared in the toolbar.
   

Therefore, whenever you need to use this tool, you can click the tab “Data” and select it.

Disable Add-Ins

Now if you don’t need to use the add-ins, you can also remove it from the toolbar.

1. Click “File” in the ribbon.
2. And then click the button “Options” to activate the “Excel Options” window.
3. Here still choose the “Add-ins”.
4. In the manage text box, choose the type of the add-in that you need to disable. Here we need to disable the “Analysis ToolPak”, therefore we choose the “Excel Add-Ins”.
5. And then click the button “Go”.
   
6. In the “Add-Ins” window, uncheck the add-in that you don’t need.
7. Next click the button “OK”.
   
8. Thus, this “Analysis ToolPak” will not appear in the toolbar.

Actually, this method only removes the Excel add-in from the ribbon. The add-in is still in your computer. If you need to delete the add-in from your computer, you need to uninstall the add-ins. Therefore, don’t mix these two different concepts.

In addition, as for removing the “Com Add-Ins”, things are different. You can select the add-in and then click the button “Remove”. And then you can remove it from your computer.

Be Careful When Using Add-ins in Excel

Even if you can acquire a lot of convenience from add-ins, you still need to be careful. Some malicious hacker will develop add-ins that can steal your data and information. And even worse, your file will be damaged due to the abnormal add-ins. When such accident happens, you can use our repair tool to repair xls corruption and other errors in Excel. This tool is exactly the insurance for your file.

Author Introduction:

Anna Ma is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair doc damage and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com

Tom,

I thought I'd send you a checklist of some things that I've tried before that have helped get the add-in loaded.  Some you may have already tried, some may be things that you can try.  Hopefully one of them gets it working for you.

A. Checking for disabled items in Excel

     1. Open Excel, go to File->Options

     2. On the Add-in page, there are 3 sections: Active, Inactie, and Disabled.  Check which list the SAS Add-in appears in.

     3. If it appears in the Disabled list, go to the "Manage" combo box at the bottom and choose Disabled Items, then click Go...  Click on the SAS Add-In in the list of items to re-enable, and then Close.

     4. Next, click on COM add-ins in that same combo box, and click Go...  Check the checkbox next to the SAS Add-in and click OK.  This should cause the add-in to load.

     5. If it does NOT load, go back to File->Options->add-ins->COM addins->Go...  In this dialog if you select the SAS Add-in, there will be a load behavior at the bottom.  If there was an error during loading, it will put it here.  This will let us know if Excel is at least trying.

B. Checking the registry directly

     1. Run regedit (as the user who invokes office)

     2. Navigate to the following key:  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\SAS.ExcelAddin

     3. See what the LoadBehavior is set to.  You want it set to 3.

C. Reset your add-in registry settings with SwitcherUtility

     1. From a command prompt, navigate to the directory where you have the Add-In installed.

     2. Run:   SwitcherUtility.exe ?

     3. This shows a list of all the command line arguments.  This has some extra options that are not available in the UI.

     4. Run:   SwitcherUtility reset            // This will reset information in the current user portion of the registry.  You want to do this as the user who is running Office, so that user's registry settings are reset, not the administrators.

     5. See if this resolves the issue

     6. Run:  SwitcherUtility resetall         // This will reset information in the local machine portion of the registry as well.  You must be running as an administrator to do this.

     7.  See if this resolves the issue

     8.  Run:  SwitcherUtility register     // This will re-register the add-in assemblies

D. Are you in a virtualized environment?  I've seen cases where each time a user logs in, their add-in gets disabled.  This was because their registry was getting "reset" each time they logged in, and the values that were being reset had the add-in disabled.  It doesn't sound like this is your case, but if it is, it's something to talk about with your system administrator.

E. Run the VSTO file

     1. Go to the folder where you installed the SAS Add-in.

     2. Find SAS.ExcelAddin.vsto

     3. Double-click this file

     4. This is essentially using the vsto file to register the add-in instead of our own process.  I don't usually suggest this, but when nothing else seems to be working to get the add-in enabled, this will often give a more helpful reason for the failure.

Hopefully one of these strategies will do the trick.  Feel free to contact me if you continue to have issues getting the add-in to load and I can take a closer look.

Tim Beese

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