Mittwoch, 11. Februar 2015

SEOtools for Excel: solutions for loosing installation folder and disappeared ribbon

My installation of SEOTools for Excel on Windows7 x64 / Excel x32 didn't want to cooperate with me from the first step. As first Excel refuses to open seotools.xll properly - it thought always it would be a text file. Then, after try to install SEOTools x64 version as addin, it wasn't not visible in the ribbon at all, but doesn't want to be deinstalled. I was forced to delete it on the hard way. Then, on trying to install SEOTools x32 version, i was pretty near success: i got the strat splash screen from SEOTools, but then an error alert raised, The Ribbon/COM Add-in helper required by add-in SeoTools could not be registered. This is an unexpected error. Error message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. And nothing more.

After some investigations it becomes clear, that the problem is in the not corresponding versions of the machine (x64), Win7 (x64) and Excel 15 (x32). BTW. if you need to get to know, what is installed on your machine - here are all the places listed, where you get needful information about your hardware, OS and Excel.

Solution

As a solution for striking SEOTools move into registry (regedit), find following places:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel
14.0 is the version number of your Excel - mine is 15.0. Delete the both folders (don't forget to backup), then restart the machine. Before you start Excel again, delete the folder with seotools.xll, then start Excel and point it to seotools.xll again.
My machine didn't have the second registry folder, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel, so if you haven't it too, don't wonder. After these manipulations my SEOTools for Excel works like expected.

Update

An other, more delicate solution, which is specially for somebody, who've done some Excel customizations and doesn't want to loose them:

  • go to the registry,
  • find this folder: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Resiliency\DisabledItems.
  • Inside the folder should be placed a single one binary key. Delete it.

After deletion the SEOTools ribbon should become immediately visible.

The logic behind the solution: sometimes the DisabledItems is set by Excel while lock-up. So it worth just to delete the wrongly set DisabledItems key.
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