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Surreptitious's avatar
Surreptitious
Copper Contributor
Jun 09, 2022

Authentication prompts when opening a document

Our users have started receiving proxy authentication prompts when opening Excel/Word/Etc and selecting File/Open.  The domains to which it wants to connect are:

 

storage.googleapis.com

cdn01.boxcdn.net

 

I could create an authentication bypass, but I not wish to as I have no idea why Office should need to connect to either.  I have deselected 'Optional connected experiences' but the prompts remain.

 

Does anyone know why O365 is attempting to use these domains, or is it simply additional office content being fetched?  Is there a way to disable the connections within O365?

 

Thank you in advance.

  • ViliusG's avatar
    ViliusG
    Copper Contributor

    Surreptitious 

     

    After weeks of digging I believe I found the source of the prompt issue:

     

    On an affected machine open up Registry Editor and navigate to:

    "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ServicesManagerCache\ServicesCatalog"

    In our case I found these entries to be the culprit:
    TP_BOX_BETA
    TP_BOX_2
    TP_EGNYTE_PLUS

     

    I've simply deleted these entries and the prompts immediately stopped on my own machine.
    In my instance most of the users were affected, so I created a GPO that would modify(delete) these entries upon user login - not had a report of the prompts since. As a safety measure I've also disabled the "Optional Connected Services" for Office users in the Trust Centre\Privacy settings.

    Our environment is a mix of W10/W11, Citrix (Server 2012 R2) users.

     

    How I found the solution:
    After days of digging around in the Office suite settings, our network settings and not getting anywhere with our network support guys I thought I'd check the registry to see if anything pops up relating to
    storage.googleapis.com & cdn01.boxcdn.net, that's how I stumbled upon those entries.

     

    Hope this helps as I've been lurking this thread for weeks now hoping for an answer.

    V.

     

    • Sergio71's avatar
      Sergio71
      Copper Contributor
      Thank you for your advice.
      I tried deleting only the "thumbnails" registry key under TP_EGNYTE_PLUS and it seems to work.
      The problem is that after a few days the key recreates itself....

      It remains to be understood what egnyte.com is for and why it has to download icons from storage.googleapis.com....
      • ViliusG's avatar
        ViliusG
        Copper Contributor
        Egnyte seems to be an optional Office integration, however no idea why it keeps popping up as we never even looked at using it. I keep a group policy on that mods the registry files - that seems to have worked rather well so far, I believe only had 1 or 2 users that reported the proxy prompts since implementing, both of which were result by a simple gpupdate.
    • R_C10's avatar
      R_C10
      Copper Contributor
      Thank you I will investigate this and report back.
      • ViliusG's avatar
        ViliusG
        Copper Contributor
        Please do - curious to know if this works for others as well.
  • R_C10's avatar
    R_C10
    Copper Contributor
    Any update on this? Over the last few weeks had a few users now reporting this... Any explanation or fix for this? Thanks
    • Sergio71's avatar
      Sergio71
      Copper Contributor

      Good morning,
      i have the same problem with some of my users.
      Is there any news?

       

      edit: It also happened with one user the first time I opened Office and tried to register it.

  • Scot_Shepperd's avatar
    Scot_Shepperd
    Copper Contributor
    Our organization has had 3 users experience this so far. They have all had various office 2019 documents open (Excel or Word) and are all running this version (16.0.10386.20017).

    None have specified that they were opening a document and it occurred. The most recent had a document open for a long time during the day and it began to pop-up.

    As a possible fix, we have turned off the Optional connected experiences and the "Let office connect to online services from Microsoft..." in the Trust Center - Privacy Options dialogue.
    • Surreptitious's avatar
      Surreptitious
      Copper Contributor
      We turned that off but unfortunately it didn't resolve the issue.
  • Surreptitious's avatar
    Surreptitious
    Copper Contributor

    The attempts to access the two domains do not present a user agent; I was forced to bypass authentication for them on our proxy, and then implement a block for the same domains.

    Still, this should not be happening.

  • ryanb445's avatar
    ryanb445
    Copper Contributor

    Surreptitious we are having the same issue, only began this week. Expect triggered by an Office update? Again would like to get confirmation on cause. Believe it is related to O365 integrations.

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