Access Add-ins are removed after every Office update (bug)
Every time I get an Office update, my Access Add-ins are uninstalled. This has been going on for at least a year. It doesn't affect all add-ins, about 1/4 of them stay (I have 26 installed). These may be ones that were installed with an .exe installer.
I think this is a bug but I don't think it will get a lot of attention because Access Add-ins aren't that popular. If you use add-ins and have seen this happen please vote.
My work around for this has been to use RegEdit to save my add-in registry settings to a .reg file. After I get an Office update, I open a File Explorer window as Administrator and then merge the .reg file. This will restore my add-ins without having to open Access as Administrator and Installing each one from the Add-ins Manager.
The registry path on my computer is:
[HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access\Menu Add-Ins]
I am using Office 365 (16.0.10730.20264) 32-bit

2 comments
-
Ben Sacheri commented
I'm not sure why this was happening to me, but I found a work-around. I exported all of my registry settings from this path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access\Menu Add-InsThen I edited the .reg file and changed all of the paths to begin with:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access\Menu Add-Ins
and ran that .reg file. Now my add-ins aren't disappearing when Office updates are installed.
-
Anonymous commented
I agree this is annoying