VSOfficeDeveloper: Known Problems, Bugs, and Fixes

Excel 2007 Extension Warning On Opening Excel Workbook from a Web Site

Web sites that use an Excel 97-2003 MIME type to open conent streamed from the web server may find that users recieve the following alert message when the file attempts to open in Microsoft Excel 2007:

"The file you are trying to open, '[filename]', is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?"  (Yes | No | Help)

This problem and the related information is documented in the following post:
Excel 2007 Extension Warning On Opening Excel Workbook from a Web Site

Editing InfoPath forms attached to Outlook emails

Users often send documents to each other as Outlook attachments.  Depending on how the attachments are opened from Outlook, they may even be editable, so the attachment can be edited and then forwarded to another recipient.  However, users with InfoPath 2007 Sp1 will find that InfoPath forms attached to emails will always open read-only.  New functionality in Outlook 2007 and InfoPath 2007 makes the old attachment functionality obsolete.  This article discusses the changes and how the new functionality can be used to benefit workflow situations.

Editing InfoPath forms attached to Outlook emails

Availability of Office File Format Documentation

Developers working with Microsoft Office files can now freely download he specifications for both the Office 2007 Open Office XML (OOXML) Formats and the older Office 97-2003 Binary File Formats (BIFF), for Word/Excel/PowerPoint.  Microsoft has agreed to cover both sets of formats under the Open Specification Promise (OSP) program. 

For information about the OSP program, visit this web site:
Microsoft Open Specification Promise

For download of the Office 2007 OOXML Specifications, visit:
Ecma-376: Office Open XML File Formats
Open XML Developer Site

For download of the Office 97-2003 BIFF Specifications, visit:
Microsoft Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) File Formats

Unable to load a .NET 2.0 Assembly from VBA in Word/Excel (2000, 2002, and 2003)

Managed code exported via COM Interop may not load correctly inside of Word or Excel VBA if the assemblies were written for the .NET 2.0 Framework. There is a policy that locks back the CLR to versions 1.0/1.1 for Word and Excel, unless the client updates their Office 2003 version or is running Office 2007.

See the following page for the full details:
Unable to load a .NET 2.0 Assembly from VBA in Word/Excel (2000, 2002, and 2003)

OCX Persistent Strings May Be Altered When Saved in Office 2007 Open Office XML Format

ActiveX controls saved in Office 2007 using the IPersistPropertyBag interface may encounter alterations to strings they save to the property bag. This occurs because the strings are persisted in the XML and must conform to XML syntax rules, which can force an alteration of the string that the control may not expect.

See the following page for the full details:
OCX Persistent Strings May Be Altered When Saved in Office 2007 Open Office XML Format

Unable to Update Metafile Presentation for OLE 1.0 Object in Word (2002/2003/2007)

When using OLE 1.0 objects in Word, you may experience problems in getting the presentation metafile (WMF) to update correctly if the document is not saved first. This problem occurs only with OLE 1.0 objects and not OLE 2.0.

See this page for the full article about the problem:
Unable to Update Metafile Presentation for OLE 1.0 Object in Word (2002/2003/2007)