Handle issues arising from the interaction between Microsoft Office and Cloud engagements

Published: January 10, 2024

General tips

See the topics below for tips on solving issues arising from the handling of Microsoft Office documents within Cloud engagements.

Verify the form-based sign-in behavior policy set up in the Microsoft Trust Center

This procedure assumes that you are an administrator and have a subscription version of Microsoft Office, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, to see the Form-based sign-in behavior tab on the Microsoft Trust Center.

To verify the form-based sign-in behavior policy:

  1. Open any Office application, such as Word or Excel.

  2. Go to File | Options | Trust Center.

  3. Click Trust Center Settings.

  4. Click Form-based sign-in.

  5. Under Sign-in prompt behavior, select the Ask me what to do for each host option.

  6. Click OK to save the changes.

  • Microsoft Office will not block future sign-in prompts.
  • The Hosts allowed to show sign-in prompts list will be auto-populated based on your future actions.

  1. On the Documents page of an engagement, do one of the following: 
  2. Make a modification in the document, save it and close it.
  3. Refresh the engagement page in your browser.
  4. Open the Microsoft Office document you modified and access the Trust Center Settings as described previously in this procedure.

  • The following entry should automatically be added for Caseware Cloud in the Hosts allowed to show sign-in prompts list:

app.casewarecloud.com

Verify whether add-ins are interfering with Cloud

Troubleshoot add-ins by disabling them one by one.

To disable add-ins one at a time:

  1. Open Excel.
  2. Select File | Options | Add-ins.
  3. Set the Manage dropdown to Excel add-ins and click Go.
  4. If you can't find an Add-ins option specific to the Office app in the Manage list, choose COM Add-ins instead.
  5. Uncheck one of the add-ins in the list and click OK.
  6. Go through the process of trying to upload supporting Word or Excel documents to a Cloud engagement and see if the issue is solved.
  7. Repeat these steps until you find out the add-in causing the issue.

Verify HttpClient on Windows

HttpClient is a class in the .NET framework used to send HTTP requests and receive HTTP responses from a resource identified by a URI and is used in various types of applications. It can interfere with information exchange between Microsoft Office and Cloud engagements.

To verify if HttpClient is causing an information exchange issue:

  1. In the Windows Search box, type services.msc
  2. Select Services.
  3. In Name, find WebClient.
  4. Right-click and select Properties.
  5. In Startup type, select Automatic.
  6. Click Apply, then OK.
  7. Exit.
  8. See if this resolves the issue.

Changing the Startup type setting for WebClient service.

Troubleshoot the inability to save Microsoft Office documents in Cloud engagements

Verify that autosaving has been disabled

Autosaving must be disabled for interactions between Microsoft Office and Cloud to work properly.

Note: You must not use a third-party website to save or back up any Microsoft Office document that has been attached to a Cloud engagement.

To verify that autosaving has been disabled:

  1. Open any Office application, such as Word or Excel.
  2. Select Files | Options | Save.
  3. Unselect the Autosave files stored in the cloud by default in Excel option.

Verify that you are not uploading Office files from the default local file location

For Office applications, the default local file location is the following:

C:\Users\{user.name}\Documents

To verify your default local file location:

  1. Open Excel.
  2. Select Files | Options | Save.
  3. Find the Default local file location setting and verify the path. Ensure that you are not uploading any files from this location to Cloud.

Verify that you or other Cloud engagement users are not using the sharing feature within Microsoft Office

Ensure that you or any other users are not using the Microsoft Office sharing feature in any Microsoft Office documents you are uploading to or creating within Cloud engagements. The Microsoft Office sharing feature is not supported in conjunction with Caseware Cloud:

Share feature within Microsoft Office applications.

  • If two users share and have access to the same Office documents, save race conditions can occur, causing unexpected results.

  • When a user shares an Office document using the Office sharing feature, a site, such as OneDrive, is required to support synchronization operations, which also causes issues on OneDrive. As a result, synchronization operations must occur on the computer belonging to the user who initiated the sharing. Several scenarios can take place whenever the shared document is saved, all leading to a loss of saved information.

To fix this:

  1. Remove all sharing on current documents by copying the document to different locations.
  2. Make any necessary updates to the documents, for example, any edits that could not be made while sharing was enabled.
  3. Replace the file by uploading the non-shared saved version.

Provide logs upon request by technical support

For additional troubleshooting when contacting Caseware, you can provide these logs.

Mac

For more information, see Locate a log file using Console on Mac.

Windows

The following instructions are valid for Windows 10.

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Go to C:\Users\{user.name}\AppData\Local\Temp
  3. Locate the Diagnostics folder.

  • Look for the folder named after the application with which you are experiencing issues.

Locating logs for Microsoft Office applications.