Load Add-In Across Multiple Users On Same Computer

[drj30026abanba]

Hi everybody,

I have an Add-in that needs to be loaded on a single computer on our network for all users who log in to that computer. Is this possible? Or are the settings to load an add-in only on a per user basis?

Thanks!

 

[jproffer]

I can't speak to how your network is set up, but I have a similar situation and at the beginning, I also thought I could put it into C:Users:Public (or something similar to that) and have it available to everyone. I also tried to direct their add-in window to a network folder where I had put the add-in (as opposed to their own User-AppData-Roaming-Microsoft-Addins folder)...I don't remember why I didn't stay with that, but I didn't.

What I finally settled on was to have Admin set up shortcuts and permissions for me to access the other users' (individually...each user) User-AppData-Roaming-MS-Addin folders so when I make a change or update, I can just drag and drop it into their addin folder from my desktop. It works well enough.

 

[drj30026abanba]

I can't speak to how your network is set up, but I have a similar situation and at the beginning, I also thought I could put it into C:Users:Public (or something similar to that) and have it available to everyone. I also tried to direct their add-in window to a network folder where I had put the add-in (as opposed to their own User-AppData-Roaming-Microsoft-Addins folder)...I don't remember why I didn't stay with that, but I didn't.

What I finally settled on was to have Admin set up shortcuts and permissions for me to access the other users' (individually...each user) User-AppData-Roaming-MS-Addin folders so when I make a change or update, I can just drag and drop it into their addin folder from my desktop. It works well enough.

Thanks for your input and reply jproffer! Your workaround/solution sounds interesting. Right now I have the xlam file in a network drive and when I "install" the add-in for a particular user, I go to his or her machine and point to this common network location. This way I can just update the shared location for everyone at once. A downside of this is that if anyone who has the add-in installed has Excel open, the file is locked so I can't update. Also I have customized the ribbon to add a new tab with a collection of these add-in macros.

The real problem though is that each user can only load the add-in on his or her own machine because that is where I loaded the add-ins and customized the ribbon. I need to also install these in conference rooms too so people can use them during meetings. If say 5 people have these add-ins, I don't want to have each of these 5 people log in to the 3 conference room computers one time so I could load the add-ins and customize the ribbon each time. For the actual customized ribbon itself, I was reading about writing a script to load in the customized UI file for each user when they log on but I don't understand how the add-ins get loaded. Here is the stuff I was reading

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...e/developer/office-2010/ee704589(v=office.14)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pr.../it-pro/windows-server-2003/cc738596(v=ws.10)

Does anyone know if the Excel setting that determines which add-ins are loaded is a user local profile setting? Maybe this roaming user profile idea would solve my problem. If a roaming user would maintain all the Excel add-in settings across different computers, then a user could log in on any computer in the network and have all their Excel add-ins loaded.

If anyone has any experience with this or any advice at all I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[jproffer]

Yea, I think that may be why I didn't stick with the network folder...I couldn't update it when *I* wanted to, but had to wait until everyone was done or gone, which meant me staying later...so that was a big NOPE. The ribbon customization travels with the add-in with the method I use and as far as I know, nobody's had any trouble with the menu showing up.

Speaking of roaming vs local profiles, interestingly enough we used to use roaming profiles and it seemed to work fine...and now we've changed to local profiles (I assume the reason was that 99% of the time each person is always on the same machine, and it wasn't worth the hassle) and it still seems to work fine. The only part of the job I needed help on, because of permissions, etc., was setting up my shortcuts to another user's Add-Ins folder.

And I realize what you're saying about roaming up there...the path is through the "Roaming" folder, and I'm not sure why that is...it could be because we used to have roaming profiles and they just left it named the same, but I'm 100% sure, because I just called and asked, that at this moment we use Local profiles...and I just looked at the path to my (and my other users) addin folders, and it is:

C --> Users --> UserName --> AppData(normally hidden folder) --> Roaming --> Microsoft --> AddIns

And I think it will be on yours also, now that I think about it. I'm almost positive, and I'll check tonight when I get home, that my personal PC has the same path to the AddIns folder...and I've never had roaming profiles, or any profiles besides mine for that matter, on that machine.

EDIT: It may seem like it would be a PITA, but really once it's set up (shortcuts to everyone else's AddIns folder) it's really not bad. I usually make any changes to mine...test it for however long I think is necessary, depending on what I changed...and then COPY it to my desktop, then drag/drop it into everyone else's AddIns folder. I get the normal "Do you want to replace this file with your file....YES" and if it errors out and says I can't replace it, I know they have it open, and I just make myself a little note to try again later. If I time it right, say at the end of the day, MOST people are closed out by then, and I can get all of them, or all but 1 maybe replaced at one time...and it takes less than a minute total to do all of them.

When everyone has the updated version, I just delete it off of my desktop to avoid confusion for myself later, and it's done.

Just out of curiosity, how many users do you have?? IOW, how many shortcuts would you need? 10....100....1000? If it's 10, which is more or less what I have, it wouldn't be bad...if it's 1000s, then my method may not be the best way to go about it.

 

[RoryA]

A downside of this is that if anyone who has the add-in installed has Excel open, the file is locked so I can't update.

You should set the file's read-only property so that the users can't lock it. Then all you need to do is uncheck the read-only, make any updates, then recheck it. The users will get the new version next time they start Excel.

 

[drj30026abanba]

Yea, I think that may be why I didn't stick with the network folder...I couldn't update it when *I* wanted to, but had to wait until everyone was done or gone, which meant me staying later...so that was a big NOPE. The ribbon customization travels with the add-in with the method I use and as far as I know, nobody's had any trouble with the menu showing up.

Speaking of roaming vs local profiles, interestingly enough we used to use roaming profiles and it seemed to work fine...and now we've changed to local profiles (I assume the reason was that 99% of the time each person is always on the same machine, and it wasn't worth the hassle) and it still seems to work fine. The only part of the job I needed help on, because of permissions, etc., was setting up my shortcuts to another user's Add-Ins folder.

And I realize what you're saying about roaming up there...the path is through the "Roaming" folder, and I'm not sure why that is...it could be because we used to have roaming profiles and they just left it named the same, but I'm 100% sure, because I just called and asked, that at this moment we use Local profiles...and I just looked at the path to my (and my other users) addin folders, and it is:

C --> Users --> UserName --> AppData(normally hidden folder) --> Roaming --> Microsoft --> AddIns

And I think it will be on yours also, now that I think about it. I'm almost positive, and I'll check tonight when I get home, that my personal PC has the same path to the AddIns folder...and I've never had roaming profiles, or any profiles besides mine for that matter, on that machine.

EDIT: It may seem like it would be a PITA, but really once it's set up (shortcuts to everyone else's AddIns folder) it's really not bad. I usually make any changes to mine...test it for however long I think is necessary, depending on what I changed...and then COPY it to my desktop, then drag/drop it into everyone else's AddIns folder. I get the normal "Do you want to replace this file with your file....YES" and if it errors out and says I can't replace it, I know they have it open, and I just make myself a little note to try again later. If I time it right, say at the end of the day, MOST people are closed out by then, and I can get all of them, or all but 1 maybe replaced at one time...and it takes less than a minute total to do all of them.

When everyone has the updated version, I just delete it off of my desktop to avoid confusion for myself later, and it's done.

Just out of curiosity, how many users do you have?? IOW, how many shortcuts would you need? 10....100....1000? If it's 10, which is more or less what I have, it wouldn't be bad...if it's 1000s, then my method may not be the best way to go about it.

Thanks for your long response jpoffer! Yeah I usually have to update at the end of the day when everyone already goes home. I just double checked and yeah we have local profiles here too. I'll have to talk to the IT people here if we were to try your solution out because I don't have those kind of permissions either for those local add-in folders. I actually have a similar situation to you because we only have around 10 users for this. Since we only have so few users, I think I might want to try your solution because it looks promising. Thanks for all your input jpoffer!

 

[drj30026abanba]

You should set the file's read-only property so that the users can't lock it. Then all you need to do is uncheck the read-only, make any updates, then recheck it. The users will get the new version next time they start Excel.

Thanks RoryA! I'll give this a try!

 

[drj30026abanba]

Yea, I think that may be why I didn't stick with the network folder...I couldn't update it when *I* wanted to, but had to wait until everyone was done or gone, which meant me staying later...so that was a big NOPE. The ribbon customization travels with the add-in with the method I use and as far as I know, nobody's had any trouble with the menu showing up.

Speaking of roaming vs local profiles, interestingly enough we used to use roaming profiles and it seemed to work fine...and now we've changed to local profiles (I assume the reason was that 99% of the time each person is always on the same machine, and it wasn't worth the hassle) and it still seems to work fine. The only part of the job I needed help on, because of permissions, etc., was setting up my shortcuts to another user's Add-Ins folder.

And I realize what you're saying about roaming up there...the path is through the "Roaming" folder, and I'm not sure why that is...it could be because we used to have roaming profiles and they just left it named the same, but I'm 100% sure, because I just called and asked, that at this moment we use Local profiles...and I just looked at the path to my (and my other users) addin folders, and it is:

C --> Users --> UserName --> AppData(normally hidden folder) --> Roaming --> Microsoft --> AddIns

And I think it will be on yours also, now that I think about it. I'm almost positive, and I'll check tonight when I get home, that my personal PC has the same path to the AddIns folder...and I've never had roaming profiles, or any profiles besides mine for that matter, on that machine.

EDIT: It may seem like it would be a PITA, but really once it's set up (shortcuts to everyone else's AddIns folder) it's really not bad. I usually make any changes to mine...test it for however long I think is necessary, depending on what I changed...and then COPY it to my desktop, then drag/drop it into everyone else's AddIns folder. I get the normal "Do you want to replace this file with your file....YES" and if it errors out and says I can't replace it, I know they have it open, and I just make myself a little note to try again later. If I time it right, say at the end of the day, MOST people are closed out by then, and I can get all of them, or all but 1 maybe replaced at one time...and it takes less than a minute total to do all of them.

When everyone has the updated version, I just delete it off of my desktop to avoid confusion for myself later, and it's done.

Just out of curiosity, how many users do you have?? IOW, how many shortcuts would you need? 10....100....1000? If it's 10, which is more or less what I have, it wouldn't be bad...if it's 1000s, then my method may not be the best way to go about it.

Thanks for your long response jpoffer! Yeah I usually have to update at the end of the day when everyone already goes home. I just double checked and yeah we have local profiles here too. I'll have to talk to the IT people here if we were to try your solution out because I don't have those kind of permissions either for those local add-in folders. I actually have a similar situation to you because we only have around 10 users for this. Since we only have so few users, I think I might want to try your solution because it looks promising. Thanks for all your input jpoffer!

Actually on second thought, I don't know if your solution would work in my case because the addin folders are located on the C drive locally. If a user was to change machines to the conference room computer, I don't think their settings would be able to transfer from the local C drive on their desk machine to the conference room. I think I will explore the roaming profiles idea more thought because the roaming profile saves the user settings on the network server. Thanks for all your input and ideas jpoffer! I appreciate it!