Usually the Smart View add-in for MS Excel causes no issues, it is a basic link that should be a no brainer, right?! Well, not always. Unfortunately, we are subject to many variations of Windows versions, MS Office versions, other plug-ins, settings, etc. Does this affect the overall performance and workability of Smart View? It shouldn’t, but the reality is that in the real world, it does. One of our clients had experienced a unique issue (by the way, the Smart View add-in was working just fine beforehand). Users were having to add the Smart View add-in every time they wanted to use Smart View in Excel. This is inconvenient and annoying for the user.
At first, we thought that this was due to the version of MS Office, however we discovered that was not the case. The next thing we checked was the Load Behavior setting in Excel, which should be set to “Load at Startup”. This was set appropriately so this was not the issue either. The last check was a Windows registry setting, which lo and behold was the issue! Why this was reset, I cannot answer… maybe a new computer or maybe a new installation. It is difficult to get a straight answer from a client; however, I am sure that there was some change that was done to the user’s computer to cause this issue. It was a simple fix and the steps are listed below:
- Close Excel and open regedit (Start -> Search -> regedit).
- Make a backup of the registry by clicking File -> Export and enter a name for the backup.
- Click Save and the export should go quickly (if not almost instantly).
- Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> Excel -> Addins and click on Hyperion.CommonAddin.
- Double-click on LoadBehavior and type 3 in the box under Value data.
- Click OK and Smart View should load whenever Excel is opened.
THE GOOD NEWS: All works now! So, my friends, the moral of the story is: Check all rational options for the solutions before checking for a new bug!
Benjamin Johnson
Senior IT Consultant – Excel Global Partners
