Google Desktop

Hi all

It is possible that you have the following problems if you have Google Desktop installed on your machine.

If you have VBA password protected files/Add-ins the password prompt appears when you close Excel.
VBA project remain open if you close a password protected file.
Duplication of VBA project names in the VBA Editor.

Solution: Uninstall Google Desktop

Ron de Bruin

Posted in Uncategorized

45 thoughts on “Google Desktop

  1. Hi Ron
    just to add a similar behaviour after installing Google Desktop Search: Duplication of VBA project names in the VBA Editor.
    Same solution :-) -> Uninstall Google Desktop Search.

    Frank

  2. Wow, thanks for this. I am right in the middle of writing a password protected add-in. I kept getting the dialog box when closing. I was pulling my hair out thinking that I had done something wrong in my code! In fact, I was delaying the release of it until I figured out the solution. Just saved me a lot of debug time!

  3. I have a workbook with code that creates a new workbook and saves it to my desktop. I email that file and then delete it. With the Google Desktop running, I couldn’t delete it as it was always “in use.”

    Solution: same as above

  4. Man, someone should shout this from the rooftops. The duplication of the project names in the VBE is quickly followed by a crash which wipes out all VBA code and userforms. I’d still be hitting my head against the wall if it weren’t for Frank letting me know about this.

    Thanks again, Frank.

  5. I was wondering what was causing that!! I’d started to go through my addin code with a fine toothcomb.

    Cheers Ron & Frank!

  6. Ah, mystery solved. I was wondering what was going on…

    Thanks, Ron. Although I really like my Google Desktop, and will have some serious separation anxiety!

    Matt H

  7. Hi
    I’d recommend that you fill out an error report for Google (as I did). The more the better so eventually they’ll fix it

    Frank

  8. I know a case where it does NOT happen. I write a lot of VBA apps with Excel and have Google search installed on one of my two development PCs. Neither PC exhibit the erroneous password prompt!!

    I think it’s because I also have a VBA certificate installed on both machines which somehow gets around the Google search error. I did have a co-worker report this error to me (since I never see it on my PCs) and I thought it was an Office 2003 thing since we just upgraded everyone to Office 2003.

    Just another twist to this story.

    Deb

  9. The duplicate VBA projects in VBE issue was discussed in a post I started at Experts Exchange:

    http://www.experts-exchange.com/Applications/MS_Office/Excel/Q_21191736.html

    “You are not going to believe this one (I didn’t anyway).

    The culprit is the registry key

    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeExcelAddinsOffice.Desktop.Google.comLoadBehaivor

    It was set to 3. I set it to 2 and all is well.

    I have an email into Google.

    Jeff, does this work for you?

    John”

    I followed John’s advice and my problem was cured … perhaps it will help with some of the anomalies here … AND allow you to use GDS again ;-).

    Jeff

  10. That registry setting should actually be (spelling error above):

    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeExcelAddinsOffice.Desktop.Google.comLoadBehavior

    Jeff

  11. This page has saved my life! Well certainly what remains of my hair. I have been going quite mad trying to sort this out. I even reinstalled Excel with no luck and was about to reformat my hard disk and start again. As above I had multiple occurences of VBA project names in VBA editor and also I was unable to view workbook objects. I also had the insistence that a password be entered (sometimes hitting escape more than 20 times worked)after having quit Excel. Also got ‘Device I/O error’.
    Ftr am using Excel 10 and Office XP Pro
    Thanks again – Mark

  12. Like Mark, I first thought that page will save my life. I have the same problem. Excel ask me VBA password when closing and I see closed VBA projects in VBE. But I have no Google Desktop installed…
    So what?
    If somebody has an idea…

  13. My google desktop doesen’t open! First time it opened, now it doesen’t! Then I unnistaled it, I saw that the field asking for your e-mail is always yellow. I instaled it again, again and again, and it still doesen’t work! Help me plz!

  14. I have been having problems with duplication of project names and have not ever installed the google desktop. After reading these entries I did a registary search on “loadbehaviour” in the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoft area. It located a loadbehaviour of 3 for Act!8 which I have installed. I reset to 2 and the duplication problem went away!! Thanks for great information and insight.

  15. i have a problem but i’m not sure if i’m in the right place.
    the problem is with my desktop
    you see the other day i was deleting stuff on my computer and i had stuff like real, google earth, aim, and i think i deleted something like google toolbar, but the problem is, is that i didnt know how to delete the stuff so i went to start at the bottom left hand side and went to search. i searched the stuff that i wanted to get rid of and like i typed in like “google desktop” (and the other stuff) so when i did that a bunch of stuff came up on the search so i right click all of them and sent them to the recycle ben and then my computer froze so i re-booted it and then i went to my account typed in my password then it longer then normal to load, then when it did load nothing but my background came up! all i could do is hit alt ctrl and delete!

    were pretty sure its not a virus and reinstalled some of things that it could have been!
    its just something is preventing Explore form opening!
    we could just rerun windows but then we have to reload the printer and microsoft word and outlook and all that shit.

    so i was wondering if you guys had any solutions?

  16. I am having the same problem with VBA projects not closing when a workbook.close method is invoked, and consequently duplicated projects in the VBE when workbooks are re-opened. Google desktop toolbar is not installed, and interestingly there is no Excel entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice. Is there another fix to the problem?

  17. Mike –

    I was having this problem with phantom VB projects, and finally I unloaded all my add-ins one by one. The one that was thus implemented was one of the commercial sparklines programs, which used VSTO/.Net as its basis. When I reloaded all other add-ins, the problem stayed away. I have since heard anecdotal evidence from users of other .Net based Excel add-ins that their phantom VB projects went away when they unloaded the .Net add-ins.

  18. This kind of problem happens if you call a .NET assembly from a password protected VBA Add-in. The problem is that the .NET garbage collector does sometimes not free references to some Excel objects. This had the side effect that Excel Password dialog pops up when we password protect our code.

    See this article for details about the password problem:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280454/en-us

    To resolve the problem you have to call the following .NET code in your Auto_Close macro:

    GC.Collect();
    GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers

    This forces .NET to free the references to the Excel objects.

    Andreas Flockermann
    http://www.microcharts.net
    Charts Reduced to the Max !

  19. Here’s another situation that can provoke duplicate VBA projects/ projects lingering after workbook closed / prompts for password on close.

    If you have a workbook containing a QueryTable that extracts data from another table in the *same* workbook, the VBA project reference remains after Excel is closed (so long as the query table was refreshed).

    If anyone is able to suggest a solution/workaround to this I would be mightily grateful!

    AndyB

  20. I am also getting the prompt for project password at close, duplicate VBA projects and the “Device I/O error”. I assumed Excel was just a buggy program.
    I don’t have Googl Desktop installed.
    I don’t have an Excel subdirectory off of HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice
    I (also) have a QueryTable that does a refresh multiple times as AndyB suggests may be the issue.

    AndyB have you found a solution for this one yet or anyone else?

  21. Hello,

    I have just discovered that The “Indispensable of the Education” (I don’t know the english equivalent), an addin of Encarta Microsoft was also responsible. Responsible for the fact that vba projects remain and responsible for Password prompt for VBA project appears after Excel quits.
    I am working with Excel 2003 and Vista.

  22. I think I have a work-around that prevents the multiple dialog boxes on closing Excel.

    It appears that the problem is somehow related to .net add-ins such as Google Desktop (I have also had a problem with CapitalIQ excel add-in). While others have suggested a registry fix (that in some cases seems to disable some of the functionality of the add-in), I have another solution. I noticed that the multiple password prompts only seemed to occur when I had not opened the Visual Basic Editor. I seems that opening the Visual Basic Editor somehow clears out the references to the closed workbooks, and eliminates the password prompt on closing Excel.

    So I added the following code to the the “ThisWorkbook” object:

    Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
    If Not (Application.VBE.MainWindow.Visible) Then
    Application.VBE.MainWindow.Visible = True
    Application.VBE.MainWindow.Visible = False
    End If
    End Sub

    Everything seems to work fine now.

  23. Thanks Ron,Frank,Andrew!!!I had same issue with CapIQ Addin and andrew’s solution worked perfectly.

    Thanks again!!!!!!
    -Raj

  24. Andrews workaround is a viable solution: The new relaese of office live creates the same problem as the google desktop search and it would appear other .net applications.

  25. I am running into this problem now; no google desktop. Andrew’s solution did not work for me on 2007, throwing an error – something like ‘programmatic access to the VBE is not permitted”. I probably could fix that on my install of excel 2007, but I dont suspect code would fix it on other’s computers. running windows xp on a mac, if that makes any difference – and the problem exists if using the bootcamp partition by itself, or vmware from os x.

    I removed the windows live search that was installed via windows update, and stopped folder sharing in vmware. if I find a solution, I’ll post back here!

  26. I was having this issue until I removed the Microsoft Office Live Add-in. I have not had this problem once since that was removed.

  27. Hi all,

    I have the same issue with Excel 2007: I start an EXCEL workbook with VB-Application (DB connection), close the workbook and open it again IN THE SAME EXCEL instance.
    1) The VB-application remains open after closing the workbook
    2) I have 2 VB-applications open after opening the workbok again
    3) The macro does not start when I open the workbook the second time
    4) The workbook starts if I open the workbook in a second EXCEL instance

    I do NOT have Google Desktop search or Live Office running

    Thanks for any advice.

    Kind reagrds
    Wolfgang

  28. I didn’t have google desktop installed, but was experiencing the same problem (device I/O error and duplicate VBA projects, followed by crash. Jeff Smith’s solution still worked for me though. I went to the Jeff’s suggested registry key, and looked for other loadbehaviour registry entry set to 3. Changed it to 2 and problem is solved. Wonderful, thanks Jeff!

  29. Installing Microsoft Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 also triggers this issue. It happens with a very simple password protected macro like this.

    Create empty UserForm1 and show it when workbook is opened.

    Private Sub Workbook_Open()
    UserForm1.Show
    End Sub

    So far, only solution is signing the VBA. Thanks, Deborah. Self-signed digital certificate works. However, once I use VBA editor, Excel pops up password prompt again and again when I close Excel.

  30. Same issue, same solution. Disabled .Net addins, resolved Device I/O errors. Frustrating.

  31. Same issue with Excel 2010 and Google Cloud Connect…
    same solution as Jeff Smith had back in 2004 (but with Google Cloud Connect instead of Desktop)…seems like Google doesn’t learn…
    works fine now…

  32. Same issue with Excel 2010 after installing Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel (32 bits). Applied the 9 year old solution and it worked. Seems like Microsoft doesn’t learn neither.

  33. I’m having the same issue as everyone else appears to have but I don’t have Google Desktop installed, my vba projects aren’t password protected, I have tried Jeff’s workbook_before close solution, unfortunately that didn’t work, I have also tried looking in the registry for the loadbehavior key, I have found several but none of them relating to excel, I have only noticed the problem in the last week or 10 days for sure but may have been happening longer. getting rather frustrated, if anyone else has any suggestions that would be great.

  34. I’ve mentioned this in a couple of places now, and haven’t seen that anybody else has the same issue, but the Microsoft Data Explorer COM addin causes “ghost” projects in the VBE for me on two computers. Any project, password-protected or not, xlsm or xlsx, remains in the VBE when closed. Unchecking the addin stops the behavior. I’d be interested if anybody else is seeing this.

  35. Thanks Doug Glancy, I had a similar issue caused by PDF Creator COM addin. No more “ghost” projects when unchecking this addin.

  36. I had this problem too. I don’t have Google Desktop, and so tried the solution of replacing all ‘LoadBehavior’ registry entries from 3 to 2 as per http://www.add-ins.com/password_problem.htm. No luck.

    Finally found it. I had recently installed ManicTime on my PC, which has been running in the background since. I simply clicked it’s system tray icon and selected ‘Exit’. Loaded Excel and my vba app, exited and no more password prompt. Whew.

  37. hello,

    i know it s a quite old issue but just to add perhaps another solution concerning the registry key :

    on my side, i have the following key

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\ProjectDBFAddIn.Connect

    i changed it from 3 to 2 as per Jeff Smith said, it s ok : no more ghost..

  38. Hi. 12 years later, this issue is still applicable.

    In my case, the culprit is the Acrobat PDFMaker Office COM Addin. Changing LoadBehavior in this key from 3 to 2 fixes it, but will leave you without the Acrobat tab in the Excel Ribbon:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > Office > Excel > AddIns > PDFMaker.OfficeAddin

    The blame can be verified by other means:
    File > Options > Add-Ins
    Choose COM Add-Ins next to Manage:, click Go
    Uncheck Acrobat PDFMaker Office COM Addin
    Click OK

    Now try opening and closing workbooks with VB Editor open.

    Acrobat version: Acrobat X (10.1.16)

  39. This is a problem that has intermittently plagued my own Excel VBA add-ins for a small number of customers. I’ve documented the problem in my online documentation: VB Password Dialog – Peltier Tech Charts for Excel – Documentation.

    While working on a specific situation for a client, I came up with a solution. I don’t know if it only works for his situation (on just my machine) or if it is more widely applicable.

    Insert the line “ThisWorkbook.Saved = True” at the end of the Workbook_BeforeClose event:

    Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
        ' blah blah before close code
    
        ThisWorkbook.Saved = True
    End Sub
    

    If anyone has a chance to try this, could you let me know if it helps for you and/or your clients.


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