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Known Issues [Office 2003 SDK Documentation]

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When you are planning and developing your smart documents, you should take the following known issues into consideration:

  • The destructor function in a C# class may never be called; however, the terminate function for a Visual Basic .NET class generally will be called. Therefore, we recommend that you avoid placing clean-up code in the destructor function of smart documents written in C#.

  • If several of your smart documents use the same namespace, the Document Actions task pane may display incorrect captions for some elements. (Caption values are defined in the SmartDocXmlTypeCaption property.)

  • When you add or delete an XML expansion pack from a document and you have other smart documents open, the Document Actions task pane may disappear, and you may not be able to display it again for the other smart documents that you have open. To display the task pane again, close and reopen the host application.

  • When you open a document in Microsoft Word that has an XML schema attached and Word recognizes that the namespace for the schema has one or more valid XML expansion packs, Word may prompt the user multiple times to attach an XML expansion pack even if the user has previously clicked No.

  • The host application may stop responding when it is trying to delete an XML expansion pack if the Schema Library registry subkey lists an invalid file location. This behavior will occur only if a smart document was deployed by using an installation package instead of an XML expansion pack manifest file, because the installation package writes the registry entries directly into the registry keys.

    Note  This behavior may be caused either by the incorrect file path being written to the registry or by the registry entry containing a file name that includes an equal sign (=) or another special character that is not allowed in smart document file names. For more information about which characters are allowed in smart document file names, see the filePath element in the XML Expansion Pack Manifest Schema.

    To avoid this problem, make sure that the registry keys written by the installation package include a Remote subkey with a value of 1. (This subkey is automatically written to the registry if a smart document is deployed by using an XML expansion pack manifest file that includes the runFromServer element.) If this registry subkey is written, Word will not delete the XML expansion pack files when users click Delete in the XML Expansion Packs tab in the Templates and Add-ins dialog box on the Tools menu in Word. Likewise, if the Remote subkey is written, Excel will not delete the XML expansion pack files when users click Delete in the XML Expansion Packs dialog box on the XML submenu of the Data menu. Deleting these files should be handled by the installation package's uninstall functionality.

  • Users may not be able to insert drawing objects from the Drawing toolbar in Office into smart documents.

  • When two XML expansion packs contain similar namespaces (for example "resume:schema" and "resume\schema"), the same value for the solutionID element, and the same file names, if these two XML expansion packs are installed on the same machine, some files for the first XML expansion pack may be accidentally overwritten when the second XML expansion is installed. The files are overwritten because backslashes (\) and colons (:) are not allowed in folder names, and Office replaces these characters with underscores when the files are downloaded. Similar behavior may also occur if the Uniform Resource Indicators (URIs) for two schemas differ only in case; for example, one has the URI "resume" and the other has the URI "Resume".

    To prevent one XML expansion pack from overwriting the files and registry settings for another XML expansion pack, use a globally unique identifier (GUID) for the solutionID element to make each XML expansion pack unique in the registry.

  • If a smart document was installed by using an installation package and the manifestLocation subkey (located under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Schema Library\ or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Schema Library\ key) is missing, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 will shut down unexpectedly if a user clicks Update in the XML Expansion Packs dialog box (on the XML submenu of the Data menu).

    To avoid this problem, either install smart documents by using an XML expansion pack manifest file or make sure that your installation package writes a manifestLocation registry subkey value, even if the value is an empty string. For more information about using an installation package to install smart documents, see Deploying Smart Documents Without Using an XML Expansion Pack.

    Note  With an incorrect manifestLocation subkey value, if the user clicks Update in the XML Expansion Packs dialog box, Excel will display an "XML expansion pack is invalid" error message; however, Excel will continue to function properly.

  • A text box, list box, or combo box control will no longer be visible in the Document Actions task pane when the caption for the control doesn't fit in the pane and the ControlOnSameLine property key is set to true. For more information, see the ISmartDocProperties interface.