Installation/Uninstall Issues Breaking Excel
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I am trying to install the intellisense add-in and running into many issues.
I downloaded the v1.4.3 .xll files from your releases, opened the excel add-in manager, clicked 'Browse', selected the downloaded file, and got the following security warning:
On clicking "Enable ..." excel seems to open fine after this though could not get intellisense to work. However on closing and reopening excel, I get the following format error:
At this point I assumed I did not install things correctly, so I tried to remove the add-in by going to the excel add-in manager, disabling the add-ins and then removing the ExcelDna.Intellisense64.xll from my file system. After doing this, I get the following error when opening excel:
Again going in to the excel add-in manager the intellisense add-in seems to have reappeared, but when I go to disable again, it says it cannot find the file (no surprise since it was deleted) and asks to remove from the list, so I select 'OK', but once again after closing and reopening excel, it still seems to be looking for the intellisense add-in.
I even went and deleted all the cached stuff in AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel and am still seeing this issue.
Finally, I have also noticed that all excel files now open as 'Read-Only' and cannot seem to change it anywhere (I have file permissions set appropriately in the OS).
I essentially cannot use excel anymore.
Please advise,
Thank you.
Update: I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled office and this problem is persisting. Please advise on how to completely remove this add-in from my computer.
@charelstoncrabb I'm sorry for the trouble you've had with the IntelliSense add-in.
The first message you show about the file format, relates to the 32-bit vs. 64-bit versions of the add-in. You require the 64-bit version, but initially Excel seems to have opened the 32-bit version, hence this error.
But in the later images, ,I see that you have both add-ins in the add-ins dialog list, the 32-bit and 64-bit.
Then Excel is trying to open the correct 64-bit version and not finding it - I guess it was moved or removed by then already.
The next thing I see is that Excel is not properly removing the add-in from it's list of add-ins, so when you restart Excel it recovers the list of add-ins from somewhere, and gives you the error about not being able to load the add-in once again.
I've not seen this problem myself, but I guess there is some kind of 'recovery' going on, where Excel is 'fixing' its add-in list every time, and hence the add-in entry keeps returning. I don't know why this happens sometimes, but I have found this StackOverflow discussion that seems to relate a similar story.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/66298895/44264
In particular, I think you should try the answer from Aaron Lin which suggests removing the add-in registry entry and then restarting the computer before opening Excel again.
Finally, the fact that Excel is loading all workbooks as read-only is a symptom I have not heard of before. Perhaps after reinstalling Excel does not have it's license set up, and so is running in the unlicensed read-only mode until you enter your credentials again.
The IntelliSense add-in itself does not interfere with the Excel installation, the add-ins list or the registry in any way. So the problems you see with adding and removing the IntelliSense add-in are caused by Excel and the Excel installation and not really under my control. But I'm sorry for the frustration it's caused and thank you for writing up what you've found so clearly. Please let me know if you are able to make any progress, or need some more support on this. I'm also happy to help directly if need be.
@govert thank you very much for the response, I will investigate further and let you know. (fyi the read-only issue did start before reinstalling excel, and I am re-installing the full office suite from my office 365 account so it shouldn't be a licensing issue)
The SO answer seems to have fixed it, thank you very much! (the read-only-ness included, very odd)
For the record, here is the solution from your link that worked for me:
Here are the steps:
- First, remove the addIn from Excel. After removing it, don't reopen Excel yet
- Go to registry: Start -> Run -> regedit -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\version\Excel\Options. Delete the registry of the addIn you want to remove. The data column will give you the hint.
- This is the key, remember to restart the computer to reset Excel. If you open Excel before the restart, it will register the AddIn in your registry again and you will need to start all over again