Outlook manifest add-in bug and Windows Live Search - an Office Communicator uninstall bug

[see updates -- looks like Office Communicator is the culprit]

Lately, my XP experience goes like this:

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up...

For today's installment I have a bug reported by precisely one web site ...

Word 2007 Bible Blog: Form region manifest specifies an add-in that is not installed

... Form region manifest specifies an add-in that is not installed: "For the past few months, I’ve had a perplexing mystery in Outlook 2007. During an Outlook session, the first time I clicked the Actions menu item, I got four Microsoft Office Outlook OK boxes in succession. The first said:

The form region IPM.Note.Microsoft.Conversation.Region cannot be opened. The form region manifest specifies an add-in that is not installed.

Then I got three more, identical except for the region specified:
IPM.Note.Microsoft.Conversation.Voice.Region
IPM.Note.Microsoft.Missed.Region
IPM.Note.Microsoft.Missed.Voice.Region...

There are some usenet hits, but nothing terribly specific. This one is closest "Form region cannot be opened".

The Word 2007 blog article says the problem is errant registry keys, and removing the references solves the problem. Sounds good to me, the Outlook add-in infrastructure is a gaping wound.

So I may yet hack the registry, but since the errors only occur once on startup, and since everything seems to work ok otherwise, I'm going to see what else I can learn. I tried using the outlook /cleanprofile switch but it didn't work.

That's where, for the very first time, Windows Live and Yahoo! Search have an advantage over Google search.

Both Live and Yahoo support search feeds. So, for example, this Live search has a feed ...

Outlook manifest add-in not-installed "IPM Note Microsoft Conversation Region " - Live Search

I've added feeds for this search to Google Reader for both Yahoo and Live. I'll see what comes up. Maybe I'll just have to wait for Office 2007 SP2.

PS. My prime suspect is Office Communicator 2005. I think it's evil and I'd uninstalled a few days ago. However, reinstalling it didn't fix the problem.

Update: New hunch. Maybe it's a botched installation of Windows Live Messenger that may have occurred when my attempt to reinstall Microsoft LifeCam was aborted by .NET stack corruption. I'll try an install/uninstall of Messenger.

Update 11/20/08: This is promising. I try installing Windows Live Messenger via the LifeCam install and I get this "Windows Live Installer" error: "There was a problem with this installation ... Catastrophic failure". Hey, so now I know where to focus my dark suspicions. I'll try installing from Windows Live and see what happens next.

Update 11/24/08: I resolved the Windows Live Catastrophic Failure bug, but installing Live Messenger didn't fix the dangling registry references that cause the Outlook 2007 FormRegions (Manifest) bug. I uninstalled Messenger and Communicator (terrible software both) and then, as advised by Word 2007 Bible Blog I deleted the Outlook FormRegions references from my registry. I made sure to exit Outlook first and checked that I didn't have a persistent Outlook process running (known Outlook 2007 problem related to Microsoft's insane Add-in infrastructure.

My money for the source of this bug is Office Communicator. I say this becauseOffice/Outlook/Addins in my registry contains OcOffice.OcForms which has the description "Outlook 12 add-in to support Communicator custom forms" and a FriendlyName of "Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Add-in" (note our corp is on Communicator 2005!). The dangling FormRegions were pointing to something called an "OcForm".

I'd also put a little money down on Newsgator, which I'd tested with Outlook 2003 as a news reader before giving up on it -- just because the only web hit on "OcOffice.OcForms" appears as an incidental entry in a Newsgator forum posting.

Update 1/3/09: It took a while, but my search feeds turned up a report that implications Office Communicator. Looks like both Office Communicator 2005 and 2007 share the same incomplete uninstall bug.

Outlook 2007. Don't. Use. New. Features.

I switched my work machine to Office 2007 a few months ago.

• Excel - minimally changed. Mostly better.
• Word - big changes. Maybe they fixed their ten year old broken formatting model, but the new model requires .docx files so I can't tell. Mostly annoying, esp the asinine shortcut bar UI, but it's ok.
• PowerPoint: improved. Update: It's bloody awful when used in PPT 2003 compatibility mode. Beyond that I cannot say.
  
• Access: yech. Some old bugs fixed, some new bugs added, some old functionality lost. A real pain to re-learn. Still, good Sharepoint integration -- that counts for something.
  

And then ... there's ... Outlook 2007.

Sweet mother. Who the Hell coded the new features of Outlook 2007? Was it outsourced to Latveria? Did someone fail to tell the engineers when code cut-off was?

They fixed some old bugs, but almost all the new capabilities, like RSS feed sync with IE 7 or the internet calendar subscription or the calendar publishing ... or .. well ... everything new ... is basically horked.

Oh, and I think they got the new menuing system half done and then gave up. Every item seems to have its own peculiar menu structure.

Categories now have color assignments? Good luck reading your purple colored Notes (Memos)!

If you're on Outlook 2007 in a corporate Exchange environment I implore you -- don't try any of the new features. Just stay with the old stuff, it's not too bad.

You've been warned.

Update: Ok, so Microsoft knows Outlook 2007 sucks. Waiting for SP2 prior to installing Office 2007 is definitely recommended.

Update 8/20/08: Never, ever subscribe to internet calendar sharing. You won't be able to remove them. Official recommendation - try "/cleanprofile" then wipe and start over. I suspect the bug is triggered by larger calendars.

Update 8/21/08: I may have a lead on the 'unable to unsubscribe to internet calendar sharing bug'. The story is that even after deleting the various data files, subscription settings, and even the .PST files where the data is stored Exchange sync will still report errors and Outlook will recreate the data file and subscription references.

A clue is that even after deleting these settings, if one looks in the Send Receive Settings:Define (Ctrl-Alt-S) one will see 'Internet calendars' as a persistent member of the Send/Receive group.

Microsoft's engineers forgot that if one removes an internet calendar subscription, it must also be removed from the send/receive group.

Where did my Window go? The XP dual monitor lost window bug and workarounds

I use a corporate Dell laptop at work and at home. In both cases I use an external monitor, so it usually runs in a dual monitor configuration. The external monitors are somewhat different resolution, but most importantly they're physically configured differently.

At work the external monitor is to laptop left, at home it's to laptop right.

Ok, so now the answer to an old problem of mine is obvious to you.

For months I've had the experience of some application windows being inaccessible. I can only access them by right clicking on the app's taskbar icon and zooming it to full screen.

Very annoying.

Today it occurred to me to change the monitor settings by moving the icon representing my home display to the same side as my work display.

Window found. I dragged it back to my laptop monitor and then returned to my usual configuration.

XP Dual Monitor support inherits some very old designs that never considered the possibility of very high resolution displays; it's also very buggy at several levels.

There are apps that are supposed to help find lost windows. This review of one such app lists a technique that I will start using (emphases mine) ...

Recover Hidden & Off-screen Windows with this Simple Tip and Freeware Program ForceWindowVisible | Pro Reviewer (My Free Review)

... Sometimes Windows just disappear off of your computer monitor. There are several reasons why this may occur:

* Changing Screen Resolution
* Using a Single Monitor after using a Dual Monitor Display
* Corruption of Registry or “ini” file data
* Programming Errors
* Program Conflicts

... Sometimes you will see the “lost” window in the Taskbar and right clicking will allow you to carry out the normal windows functions. What has happened is that the coordinates the system has for the window (for whatever reason) make the system think the window should be displayed somewhere off of your actual monitor screen.

This standard Move function tip is available from many sites offering advice, hints and tips – this is what you need to do:

Right Clicking on the Taskbar Icon [for your app then] ... Click on Move and the move cursor will be displayed in the middle of the title bar for the window (although obviously you can’t see it on an offscreen window).

The important thing now is to press one of the cursor (up/down/right/left arrow) keys on the keyboard to attach the window to the mouse. If you don’t do this you can move the Move cursor onto the visible screen and click with the mouse but nothing happens ...

When you click on any one of the arrow keys it attaches the Window to the mouse cursor and you can drag it back to the visible area. Of course if you don’t know where it is and it is a long way off your actual screen this can be a bit of a hit and miss process.

Actually when you hit the arrow key it also moves the window in the direction of the arrow so you can use the arrows to get the window back but this can be even more long winded and frustrating if you don’t know where the window is in relation to your screen.

Using ForceWindowsVisible

This is a very simple, very small portable executable file which will list all the windows currently created on your PC by the operating system and the programs you are running....

I'm not going to install the ForceWindowsVisible app (corporate XP desktops are very unstable these days, I don't like to add new things), but it's good to know I'm not alone.

I hope Windows 7 will do better. OS X, of course, manages this stuff very well.

.NET Framework corruption may cause Microsoft LifeCam installer hang. Java-vu?

It all started innocently enough, with corporate testing of Google Video chat.

In one test using a camera only on my machine my test subject couldn’t read my whiteboard. She was seeing a mirror image display.

It’s not supposed to work that way. I’m supposed to see a mirror image of myself in a small part of the screen, my correspondent is supposed to see a standard non-mirror image [1].

So I tried to fix things. That’s how I got Java-vu all over again, with flashbacks to the dark days of .comBubble 1.0 – when we were wrecked on the reefs of JVM version control.

First I uninstalled all other video conferencing clients, starting with Oovoo. Nice product in many ways, but it kept dropping my conferences. Can’t have that.

Then I tried adjusting the settings on my Microsoft LifeCam VX 6000. (Nice hardware for its day, horrid drivers.[2])

Oops, can’t find the software. Ok, I’ll just reinstall – time to see how much Microsoft has fixed.

So I download the LifeCam drivers and install. All is well until I get to the point where it’s say “Downloading and installing files..." . The progress indicators moves gradually to the end … and starts over again.

And again.

And again.

Time goes by. It seems to be hung. I kill the install and a search leads me to a Microsoft support site (emphasis mine) ..

Software Setup Malfunction in Start - Help and Support Feature Discussion

… My problem is similar. I'm trying to install the software but the install process won't proceed past, "Downloading and installing files..." The green bars at the bottom fill up, as if progressing, but it's been running for a couple of hours now. I thought maybe the problem was with the CD, so I tried  it with the downloaded version with the same result…

Hey PJB. After much frustration, and less than great support from Microsoft, my issue was tracked down to be caused by a bad file somewhere in my Microsoft .Net Framework software...I had versions 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 installed on my computer...along with a SP 1 for version 1.1.

I found this link helpful: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923100/en-us

Try and use method one to uninstall your .net framework software. Method one did not work for me, I kept getting issues with removing both 2.0 and 3.0.

I then used method 2 which entails following another link and downloading a .net framework cleanup tool. I ran the program to cleanup ALL .Net versions. Then I went back to Microsoft Downloads and downloaded .net framework 1.1, 2.0 and 3.5 (not 3.0 - for some reason 3.0 would not download and created issues).

Once these .Net Framework downloads were installed I downloaded and installed LifeCam 2.04 software and my kid was up and running in 10 minutes.

It took me over a week to get this issue resolved.

One more thing, when you are downloading and installing your .net framework files you need to make sure you download in the proper sequence. Also, for some reason I encountered printer issues the first time through this. The second time I just unplugged my printer until all downloads were installed and I did a computer restart and the printer issue went away.

Yes, Microsoft has problems. Sure reminds me of my JVM versioning nightmares.

The kb article strongly recommends uninstalling from Add/Remove Software – but that only worked for .NET 1.1. The OS wouldn’t uninstall 2.0 or 3.0 because they were in use. It did uninstall 3.5.

So I followed the scary “method 2” and stripped all my .NET stuff away and rebooted. Scary, because .NET is XP’s 2nd brain now, so I was potentially breaking a lot of stuff.

I got lucky, no critical problems on restart. I decided to then use Windows Update to add back my .NET runtimes. It first offered me 1.1 and 2.0; I have no use for 1.1 so I just took 2.0. It then allowed me 2.0SP1. Each install took a fair amount of time.

I stopped there and tried running the LifeCam installer. I figured it would install 3.0SP1 if it needed it.

It seemed to hang again, but I figured it was installing .NET 3.0 and was using a very bad process indicator. I was willing to give it an hour, but it finished in about 30 minutes or so (I think our WAN connection is hurting).

I rebooted. Now Add/Remove showed me only .NET 2.0SP1 and .NET 3.0SP1. I didn’t bother with 3.5. Interestingly I used to also see .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 as separate entries, but now I only saw the SP entries.

Now I could use Microsoft’s control panel for the LifeCam. There’s a “mirror mode” setting there, I turned it off. I also set the resolution to 800x600 for what that was worth.

I then retested in Google Video Chat. Success – my correspondent reported the mirror problem had resolved.

Phew.

Oh, and yes, I think there was something evil in my .NET 3.0/SP1 install.

[1] People are very distracted by non-mirror views of themselves. We aren’t used to looking at ourselves that way. So most video conferencing clients mirror our own image. Problem, is that inverts text. The smarter video clients let users turn off self-mirror mode, but Google doesn’t allow that (not sure about iChat). The remote person never wants to see me or my whiteboard in mirror mode.

[2] Google is reselling a nice Logitech webcam for $70.

iPhone Google Mobile App changes - more than voice

The headlines are all about server-based voice search: Now you can speak to Google Mobile App on your iPhone.

So far the voice search seems more novel than interesting. Voice software doesn't like my voice (hey, it sounds clear to me!), and Google is no exception. It would be much more useful if:

1. Voice search preferences were distinct from text search preferences. Then I could limit voice search to contacts
2. Contact voice search ran against my Gmail Contacts, not my iPhone Contacts. The latter set is much larger.
   

There's a several second lag between when you change settings in Google Mobile Apps (GMA) and when the changes propagate to google servers. This is confusing if you don't know about it.

On the bright side, search results are now optimized for the iPhone, including images and news, and you can set search with keyboard showing as your start screen. Terrific launch time too! (Tap the top of screen to dismiss the keyboard -- that's not obvious and if you don't know about it it looks like you're locked out of the app!)

You can now add a Google Apps set that's distinct from your Gmail identity - one domain only (see settings).

So now I can view my Gmail calendar and my family domain Calendar, but when you view from this URL you can't edit calendar settings. It's read only. So I still need to use the top-secret Google Apps only editable calendar URL.

There are a LOT of changes to Google Mobile Apps. Since they're a neat fusion of iPhone resident app and web app it's a bit hard to tell what's changed where, but overall it's a great set of improvements. I particularly like the ability to work with both a Google Apps domain and a Gmail identity.

So even if the voice stuff doesn't do much for me, the rest is very good. Now if Apple would release it's beringed fingers and give Google access to the calendar API...

Update 2/20/09: The voice search turned out to be just a toy, but the rest worked well.

The Personal and the Apps Calendar

Google notification confusion: Talk, Gmail or Deskbar Gadget?

We all know Google's flagship web apps: Google Mail (Gmail) and Google Contacts, Google Reader, Blogger, YouTube, Photos, Google Apps and Google Maps. Some would include Google Groups.

Lately they've been putting more energy into iGoogle (their portal) and Google Social. I think Google Calendar is sensational. At the other extreme, Google Desktop Search is clearly toast and Sites is struggling.

That's not so bad, but the problem is figuring out what to do on the periphery.

I've given up on Google Notebook, but what about Google Talk now that Gmail hosts Google Video Conferencing? In particular, what's Google's strategy for notification of events on the desktop?

I found this post outlining 3 options for chat/communication related events: Has the Google Talk desktop client been abandoned?

It's a good review.

My take is that Google Talk is done and Gmail notifier is very stale (last update 3/2006). So there's a hole. Google needs to give us a general notification solution that plugs into an API-equipped back-end web service with user rule control.

In the meantime I'm going to see what I can do with the Google Deskbar (no GDS though) and gadget based notification.

More later.

Update 11/14/08: I didn't like Google Desktop (Deskbar). I'd chosen not to install Google Desktop Search, but it still stuck a plug-in into Outlook. Outlook is unstable enough to begin with, I don't like using add-ons or plug-ins with it. Shortly after I noticed this, Google Desktop crashed. Uninstall immediately.

I might try Gmail Notifier next.

Update 11/18/08: Google Notifier is #$! broken:

Gmail Known Issues - Help Center

... If you've enabled the 'Always use https' setting in Google Mail, you'll need to install a patch for the Notifier to work with this setting...

... If you decide you no longer want to use the https setting, you'll need to install the other file included in the download to reset the Notifier. Use the same method as above, except with 'notifier_https_undo.reg.'

This is ridiculous, I ain't installing a registy hack that requires another registry hack to reverse.

I still think Google Talk is finished, so I'm not going to install that notifier.

I'll either install 3rd party notifier (there are plenty of 'em) or wait (for eons?) until Google comes up with a notification solution.

Update 2/14/09: We're making heavy use of Google Video Chat these days, it's weird there's still no clear notifier solution.

Appigo Todo.app alternatives: nothing?

After my recent Appigo misadventures and Evernote bugs I decided I needed to look around. Again.

I'd been hearing good things about Things.app, but the desktop app is still pre-release. No import/export.

So I took another look at OmniFocus. No real import capabilities, though they'll sync with whatever's in iCal. So if Bento weren't so slow and feeble I'd move my data into iCal and then OmniFocus. If.

I really don't see any great options, so I'm still with Appigo for the moment.