RibbonApi is no longer working
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We use RibbonApi 1.2 to create ribbons/groups/controls in Excel (online and desktop). We are now seeing that it does not work in any dev/test/prod environment internally for ourselves or any of our customers. When we look in our logging we see a dramatic uptick in this error. Usually we might see 10s of incidences in a week and they're resolved with a refresh of the addin (or trying again the next day).
In the last 7 days, we've seen that number jump into the 1000s. Our addin is severely hamstrung and all but the most basic of use-cases are inaccessible.
Your Environment
- Platform [PC desktop, Mac, iOS, Office on the web]: desktop/web
- Host [Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.]: Excel
- Browser (if using Office on the web): all
Expected behavior
Creating ribbons/controls works consistently.
Current behavior
No error occurs, the request to create controls is received, but no ribbons/controls are ever created. We usually will create a few hidden contextual tabs when the addin is initialized and then toggle visibility depending on what the user is doing. The typical failure is an error saying a ribbon/control with the given ID is not found. In a dev environment we modified the behavior to default the ribbons to be created and visible so that we don't need to reference them by ID, and they still just never get created. The documentation is clear that it can take a moment for these to get created, but we've done this experiment many times and waited 10s of minutes and never seen anything show up.
Steps to reproduce
- Follow this doc: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js-docs-pr/blob/main/docs/design/contextual-tabs.md
- Note that it doesn't work.
Context
This is affecting every environment and every customer we have at this point. It's ramped up over the last several days. It is not uncommon that this API randomly stops working for a day or two and we typically chalk it up to bad deployments on the Microsoft side because it happens outside of any changes we've made to the addin. Usually only a few customers are impacted, but this time it's pretty much everyone, which makes us look bad and it's become a massive support headache.
Hi, We are also facing this issue. Can you please get us an update on this as soon as possible. This is a showstopper bug for us.
Hi @harishbhaskaruni @zpfaltersack Thanks for reporting this issue. We'll be looking into this problem, will report back here if we have a suggestion for you. Thanks.
Dear Microsoft Team, can you please confirm know if you can replicate the issue on your side ? @shanshanzheng-dev @yinaa @NT-D
Showstopper for us as well, our ribbon suddenly stopped showing in Excel Online with the following error:
It used to work until yesterday.
Steps to replicate:
- Use Excel Online
- Install Velixo NX add-in from AppSource
- Click the Velixo button on the Home tab, wait for the side panel to open
- Actual result: above error in the console, the ribbon does not show
- Expected result: the ribbon appears
Hi @wh1t3cAt1k @harishbhaskaruni Thanks for the detail info. We have confirmed this problem and it's under root cause investigation now. Sorry for inconvenience.
Thank you for confirming you can reproduce the bug.
While the current issue is affecting all customers, I am also curious to understand why we see this so regularly albeit at an admittedly much smaller volume. Is anyone else seeing that? As I mentioned in my original message, we do see this pretty often but only at the rate of a handful of times a day and it can usually be resolved by waiting a day or sometimes even just refreshing the browser (when using Excel Online).
I'd like to understand why the Ribbon API seems to be particularly unreliable while this issue is getting some attention.
Hi I'm here to give you an update, a couple weeks ago a change was made by another team and it caused a regression. The fix has been submitted and we are waiting for it to deploy out. Sorry for the inconvenience it has caused you and your customers. I will come back and update you on where it is in the deployment pipeline.
Thanks @trigurl, that's great to hear. Do you have any thoughts on the occurrences of this issue prior to two weeks ago? We see it pretty often, just not with the volume we've seen the last 7-14 days.
Looking at the notes, the change that caused the regression went in at the start of May. When we deploy through our rings, they start off small then the volume of users will grow.
We are facing it too... good to hear it is going to be fixed soon.
Hi @zpfaltersack @wh1t3cAt1k @4tti , I have checked this issue from my side and found this issue can not repro on Wac and win32 now, could you please confirm if you still have this issue? We value your feedback, Thanks.
@shanshanzheng-dev can you please try on Excel for the Web? On our side it doesn't replicate on Excel for Windows, but ribbon completely stopped appearing on Excel Online.
@shanshanzheng-dev #4495 (comment) - see my replication steps above.
@shanshanzheng-dev The error is still occurring for me in Excel for the Web but it does look like things are now working in Excel Desktop.
This completely blocks our E2E tests... Please prioritise if possible!
@shanshanzheng-dev for internal to Microsoft we should see the issue fixed. We need to wait until the Excel online client deploys through the rings to Prod for customers to start seeing improvements.
Excel Online is going to fast track this, but just waiting for automation to finish. Could be soon.
Thank you @trigurl!
@trigurl @shanshanzheng-dev It looks like the ribbon started working this morning. We're still waiting for confirmation to roll in from our customers but I've verified it works for me in all our environments. Thank you for getting this resolved!
I'm trying it out now but it's not working for me :( It's working for some of my coworkers. Still investigating.
Update - we are only 50% rolled out.
Hi folks, I tried this with the Velixo add-in and my colleages as well. The Contextual Tab should be appearing now.
Confirmed, it seems to work again.
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it is marked as needing author feedback but has not had any activity for 4 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 3 days of this comment. Thank you for your interest in Office Add-ins!
This issue has been closed due to inactivity. Please comment if you still need assistance and we'll re-open the issue.