Forum Discussion
Office Add-ins error: Cannot connect to catalog
Hi MTSBob - I hope all is well in your world.
I recently encountered this with another "Modern" https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/overview/office-add-ins, one we're in the process of deploying via https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/#11614. What's particularly frustrating is that this was working fine a few weeks ago.
Here's what I think I know:
- The 'https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/#11609' policy is not enabled (set to 0)
- Doesn't seem to matter whether or not the 'https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/#11610' policy is configured
- The manifest file is in place & accessible
- This was for sure was working in August & July; it's only recently that I've noticed that the add-in is no longer accessible/available.
- Thanks to AGPM I am the gatekeeper for all group policy modifications so I can confirm no rogue changes have been made.
Me and another sharp guy on my team have examined this fully and we're both at a loss. We're beginning to wonder if an update changed this behavior.
- Thanks for confirming and the extra information. This was also working for me up until a few days ago.
MTSBob: We sorted this out today.
- When we were initially manually configuring "Block Web Add-ins" (DisableAllCatalogs) and "Block Office Add-ins" (DisableOMEXCatalogs), we were setting it in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs.
- When you configure those two settings in policy (User \ Administrative Templates \ Microsoft Office 2016 \ Security Settings \ Trusts Center \ Trusted Catalogs), it gets written to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs.
- Because we need to target this particular Office Add-in to a subset of users, we cannot rely on setting the Trusted Catalog Location policy items so we leveraged registry preferences in order to make use of https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/dn789189(v=ws.11).
When we dropped those keys we matched our initial test configuration which was to write the Office Add-in settings to to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs. Turns out that gets ignored or overridden when something is set at the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs level. - Once we realized this behavior we corrected the discrepancy and decided to rely solely on registry preferences, not policies, and the add-in started working again.
So we shot ourselves in the foot but it took us a while to realize it.
Hi, I came across this thread while searching for a solution to my issue. I am having a similar issue with my Word Add-Ins--Admin Managed Add-Ins "Cannot connect to Catalog"--but my device is an M1 Mac device (Apple silicon), instead of Windows. I wonder if you had a chance to look into MacOS equivalent debugging of this issue?
I have signed out, uninstalled, deleted all remaining files, rebooted, and reinstalled-- but the issue remains. I followed this thread I found: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/admin-managed-add-ins-not-available-in-word-mac/0b3489ed-c179-4d87-99af-f37839037458
I checked other devices that I have and noticed that both a Windows device and an intel-chip Mac device don't have the issue, even with the same Office account. At the moment I can't tell if it's related to the device (maybe Add-In function is running on Rosetta on the M1 Mac?) or if it's something conflicting in my device.
Any comment or update would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
