Fixing Word 2007 in Vista

Many of us use Microsoft Office on occasion. I also know that many of you have programs installed that add plug-ins to Microsoft Office – specifically Microsoft Word. I have found that most of the plug-ins work perfectly in Windows XP, but a few of them can create chaos on a Vista machine. I ran into issues with two plug-ins: SnagIt (major problems) and Contribute (minor issues). First, allow me to say that I use both of these programs on a regular basis – and I love them both (I use SnagIt to grab all of my screen images for blogging and office documentation).

I was experiencing the following issues:

• Couldn’t select text with the mouse on occasion (helped improve my keyboard skills, though)
• Word wouldn’t ever shutdown properly
• The initial window had changed (the window that allows you to select what type of document you want to create)

As developers, I assume some of you have had issues with plug-ins – so I figured that I would share how I overcame these issues. First, I must tell you that my solution involves deactivating the “problem plug-ins” not fixing them.

All that is needed is a simple registry adjustment. Go to command and type “regedit” (this will bring up the UAC unless you have disabled it). Once in regedit – navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins”. This folder should contain a folder for each “Addin” (plug-in) that is installed in Word (see below).

Inside each folder each plug-in has a key named “LoadBehavior”.

If you click on the “LoadBehavior” key and change the value to 0 – it will not be loaded at runtime by Word.

By doing this, you can experiment and see which plug-ins are causing the issue. Once discovered, you can leave them off. Restart Word, and you should be working properly.