I know this is kind of a petty issue.  But I am testing the application and getting to know it before it is fully deployed and once little nuance I’ve notice is the toolbar in outlook.  It automatically adds itself to a new row at the bottom.  So if we move the toolbar around or put it in a preferred location it doesn’t matter. The next time outlook is loaded and the 3rd party app is launched it puts it on a new line.  It’s not a huge deal to me but I know some of our users would gripe who like things a certain way. =]

Just tossin’ that out there.

Thanks!
Creighton

Thanks for your input, Creighton.  In the past, we tried to save the position of our Outlook toolbars.  Unfortunately, the order and timing of how Outlook loads add-ins made this very difficult.  In fact, for a while we experienced something we called the “dancing toolbar” problem, as we tried to put our toolbar back to the saved location, but Outlook kept inserting other toolbars and moving them around.

In the end, we decided to let Outlook put the toolbar where it wanted, rather than fight with it.

Michael

That makes sense. I figured you had tried to fix its position but thought I’d ask anyway.

To add to this, I have a non petty problem, the toolbar simply dissappears altogether. I have tried repairing, uninstalling and reinstalling Newforma. I cleared the registry entries and found that it is affecting the user profile versus the system itself.

Is there a quick fix for this? I have noticed this a few times and even noticed the toolbar not adding into Outlook on a first install of the client.

So the toolbar in 1 instance, worked and then dissappeared forever for a user. Another instance is the toolbar (add-in) never took place on the first installation of the software altogether.

Is there a way to manually invoke/add-in the toolbar for outlook? It is not part of the list of toolbars to just place back into view.

.

The ‘disappearing’ toolbar can happen for a few reasons:
First, Outlook may disable the plugin. In Outlook 2003, you can renable it from Outlook by going to Help > About Microsoft Outlook > Disabled Items
If the plugin is here, select it, then click Enable.

For more info, see Newforma help for the topic titled: “Enable/Disable the Project Center Add-in for Microsoft Outlook Toolbar”

Second, the plugin may be turned off. You can force it to initialize.

1. In Microsoft Outlook, click the Tools menu and select Options to open the Options dialog box.
2. Click the Other tab.
3. Click Advanced Options.
4. Click COM Add-Ins.
5. Mark the Newforma Outlook Add-in checkbox.
6. Click OK three times to finish the process.
If the plugin is still not loading, then there are some other issues at play here - perhaps there is a conflict with another plugin in Outlook - disable all plugins, then enable the Newforma plugin using the second process above.
If the issue is not a conflict with another plugin, there could be some key components missing -Office 2003 or 2007 PIA, VSTO (visual studio tools for outlook).

At this point, we would want to discuss this offline and look at your system to see what is happening there. Get us the log files, we’ll open a case and engage out of the forum.

Please check out this help topic - “Newforma Project Email Diagnostics dialog box” and to send the log files to Support.
When you opt to send the logs, an email message window will open with a zip file attachment. Make sure you add a subject line and some detail about the situation and what you have tried. This will open a new case and provide us with the logs.

This should get you started.

Eric Buterbaugh

Thanks! It just took a bit of troubleshooting. Af of the suggestions were needed to fix these issues. Some required to run the repair and then enabling the COM Add-in, others as simple as enabling it.

I’d like to add one more item to Eric’s earlier post.  After shipping Fourth Edition, we noticed that the Outlook add-in toolbar was getting soft-disabled at a higher frequency than we expected.  It turns out that there was a defect in the Microsoft code on which we build the add-in.  The “Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime”, which is a prerequisite for the Newforma Outlook add-in, would disable our add-in when Project Center (or other software) created an email message when Outlook was not running.

Microsoft has fixed the problem.  Luckily, you do not need to re-install the Newforma software.  You just need to update the VSTO runtime, which you can download from Microsoft using the link below.  Once you’ve made this update, it is much less likely that the Newforma Outlook add-in will become disabled in the first place.  This will update VSTO from 8.0.50727.816 to 8.0.50727.940.  On that web page you will also find the way to determine which version of VSTO runtime you currently have.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Runtime (build 8.0.50272.940) (x86): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=49612