It’s quite common nowadays for some unscrupulous software companies to bundle PUPs in their installers. For that reason, I’m always keen when hitting the next button on those installers, however it seems that’s not enough.
I’m saying this due to a recent experience where even after picking the only components I needed in the installer, it went on to install an extra component. To be fair though, that component, an office add-in, wasn’t listed in the components to be installed.
Regardless, the one component I installed was not in any way dependent on this add-in, and as a matter of fact, it’s the add-in that was dependent on the components that I chose not to install.
The Add-in
The add-in question here was none other than PDFFill’s PDF Printer Office Add-in which is bundled along with their free PDF Tools.
The add-in in this case wasn’t functional and either did nothing or crashed my office programs when I tried using it. I can only assume this is either an honest mistake on the part of the developer or a deliberate attempt at advertising their add-in.
Anyway, I had to remove the add-in whilst retaining the main program but that proved to be quite problematic. The following is everything I tried in my quest to remove this stubborn add-in.
Perhaps one of this will work for you should you find yourself in a similar situation.
1. Disable/Remove Add-in within Office
1. Went to the Options for a specific Office Product e.g. Word Options
2. Selected the Add-Ins Tab
3. The add-in was listed there as a COM Add-in. So I selected that type of add-in at the drop-down list at the bottom and hit the Go button.
4. In the next window, I first removed the check mark to disable the add-in but that didn’t work. Next I selected it and hit the Remove button but that didn’t work either.
2. Check the Startup Folders
The add-in was nowhere to be found in the MS Office Startup folder found in these locations:
C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
So, nothing to delete.
3. Disable/Remove using Autoruns
The nifty Autoruns from Sysinternals includes an Office tab that list Ms Office add-ins. So I tried disabling it from there to even deleting its’ entries but that didn’t work.
This called for the nuclear option.
4. Remove from the Registry
Hoping to delete its keys, I went to the following keys but the add-in wasn’t available there:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint
5. Delete Custom Command
I stumbled upon this by chance while trying to figure if the add-in worked and surprisingly it’s what worked for me. I just right-clicked on the add-in button in Ms Word 2013 and selected “Delete Custom Command”.
Doing that removed it from the Excel and PowerPoint and also in all the other Office Suite Versions (2007, 2010, 2016) I had installed. I’ve since established that this option is also available in the older versions of Ms Office.
6. Command Line Switch
If you don’t want to load the add-in a specific instance you can use a command line switch for that. Just start up word from the command line and add the [/a] switch at the end e.g. for Word 2013 it would be:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15>WINWORD.EXE /a
Note: the path will depend on the type of Windows (32-bit or 64-bit) you’re running as well as the version and type of MS Office (32-bit or 64-bit).
Alternatively, you can create a shortcut for Word (WINWORD.EXE) with the switch added in the Target box so that every time you start Word from that shortcut, no add-in will be loaded. e.g. for Word 2013 it would be:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\WINWORD.EXE" /a
If need be, you can copy this shortcut to your Start Menu folder.
Note:
- This switch only works in Word and using it will also disable all global templates (including the Normal template). That won’t however making a new document, not unless you wanted to use a custom template.
Hi Kelvin,
I exactly had the same issue EVENTHOUGH I have never installed PDFill’s Writer package (Image and PDF Writer) and their Office PDF Add-In Button comes as a part of it. I only did install their FREE Tools package without “Writer” feature which includes optional Office Add-In button. Eventhough that was strange enough, I noticed eventhough I removed Add-In from everywhere including Word’s Options and COM ADD-INs GUI windows and registry locations, it was still appearing ADD-INS tab when I open any Word document.
I don’t know why PDFill developers wouldn’t remove that ADD-IN button from Word, while it was successfully unloaded/removed in Excel and Powerpoint, but not in Word.
I was experiencing the same issue with Word 2007 though.
So, the key is right click this stubborn PDF button ADD-IN and click “Delete Custom Command”? Is that all?
Best regards…
Hi Onur,
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Delete the command and the addin button will be removed for good.