UpSlide monitoring service

Avatar
Written by Julien Villemonteix | Updated

As with any VSTO add-in, UpSlide can be deactivated even when behaving normally. We recommend you enable a reactivation service to prevent disruption to your users. 

Deactivations can be caused by 

  • An Office or Windows update
  • Office crashes when UpSlide is running, and the user is prompted to deactivate UpSlide

If that happens, UpSlide can be reactivated manually by following this procedure.

To avoid this extra work and/or potential IT involvement each time the Add-in gets disabled, we include a reactivation service with UpSlide called UpSlide monitoring service.

UpSlide monitoring service runs under local service accounts and monitors all the registry keys modified when UpSlide is deactivated. If a deactivation change is detected, the service simply reactivates UpSlide.

Note that this service will not interfere with manual deactivation.

How to Deploy the Reactivation Service using Support.exe Tool

2021-03-17_15h41_51.png

In the Support.EXE tool there is an option to install the Reactivation Service automatically. This can help when a single user is having issues with UpSlide deactivations.

List of monitored keys in the registry

Here is the detailed list of the keys monitored and the subject to be altered by the UpSlide monitoring service.

The following keys are present in the local machine registry hive, and their values are susceptible to be reset by the service. They are required for UpSlide to load properly.

  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Excel
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.PowerPoint
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Word
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Excel
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.PowerPoint
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Word
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Excel
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.PowerPoint
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Word

In a manner that is identical to the previous keys, the following keys in the user registry hive are needed for UpSlide to load properly and will be reset by the service:

  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Excel
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.PowerPoint
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\Finance3point1.UpSlide.Word

In addition, Office applications use some keys to disable add-ins. Disabled add-ins are added as values in the following user registry hive keys:

  • Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Excel\Resiliency\DisabledItems
  • Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\PowerPoint\Resiliency\DisabledItems
  • Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Word\Resiliency\DisabledItems

The service will delete the values corresponding to UpSlide in the above keys if needed.