Home → Techniques and Tips → All Products → Removing Outdated References to Office from the System Registry
Disponible en español: Quitar referencias obsoletas de Office del Registro del Sistema
Disponível em português: Removendo referências ultrapassadas para o Office a partir do Editor de Registro
Removing a version of Microsoft Office can sometimes leave behind "orphan" keys in the System Registry. These references to products that are no longer installed can prevent Palisade add-ins from working correctly with Excel, Project, or both — you may see messages such as "Application-defined or object-defined error", "Automation error: Library not registered", "Error in loading DLL", "Could not contact the Microsoft Excel application", "File name or class name not found during Automation operation", or "Object variable or with block variable not set". Results graphs or other graphs may not appear as expected.
To remove the outdated references, you will need to edit the System Registry, as detailed below. If you'd rather not edit the System Registry, or you don't have sufficient privilege, you may be able to work around the problem by starting Excel first and then the Palisade software. If you'd like to make Palisade software start automatically whenever Excel starts, please see Opening Palisade Software Automatically Whenever Excel Opens. Otherwise, please proceed as follows:
Close Excel and Project.
Click Start » Run, type REGEDIT and click OK.
{00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} Key for Excel
Click on Computer at the top of the left-hand panel, then press Ctrl+F to bring up the search window. Paste this string, including the curly braces {...}, into the search window:
{00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
Check (tick) the Keys box and Match whole string only; clear Values and Data.
Click the + sign at the left of {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} to expand it. You will see one or more subkeys:
Identify the one(s) that do not match the version(s) of Excel you actually have installed. If all of them do match installed Excel versions, omit steps 5 and 6.
You are about to delete the key(s) that correspond to versions of Microsoft Excel that you do not have. For safety's sake, you may want to back them up first. Right-click on {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}, select Export, and save the file where you'll be able to find it.
Right-click the 1.something key that does not belong, select Delete, and confirm the deletion. Repeat for each 1.something key that does not belong.
The {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} key can occur in more places. Usually they all have the same subkeys, but not always, so you need to examine each instance. Tap the F3 key to get to each of the others in turn. For each one, repeat steps 4 through 6 (click the + sign, export the key to a new file, and delete the orphaned 1.something entries).
{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52} Key for Office
Click on Computer at the top of the left-hand panel, then press Ctrl+F to bring up the search window. Paste this string, including the curly braces {...}, into the search window:
{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52}
Check (tick) the Keys box and Match whole string only; clear Values and Data.
Click the + sign to expand the key. You will see one or more subkeys:
Identify the one(s) that do not match the version(s) of Office you actually have installed. If all of them do match installed Office versions, omit steps 10 and 11.
You are about to delete the key(s) that correspond to versions of Microsoft Office that you do not have. For safety's sake, you may want to back them up first. Right-click on {2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52}, select Export, and save the file where you'll be able to find it. (Choose a different name for this file, such as Key2.)
Right-click the 2.something key that does not belong, select Delete, and confirm the deletion. Repeat for each 2.something key that does not belong.
The {2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52} key can occur in more places. Usually they all have the same subkeys, but not always, so you need to examine each instance. Tap the F3 key to get to each of the others in turn. For each one, repeat steps 9 through 11 (click the + sign, export the key to a new file, and delete the orphaned 2.something entries).
Close the Registry Editor.
If you run @RISK with Microsoft Project, please follow the additional steps in Removing Outdated References to Project from the System Registry to find and remove outdated references to Microsoft Project.
The software should now run normally. After verifying @RISK (PrecisionTree, etc.), and running Excel independently of our software, you can delete the saved .REG files.
Last edited: 2016-04-01