Microsoft Office Click-to-Run and NAV
Microsoft Office has a very interesting feature called Click-to-Run. It is a new software delivery mechanism. Office Click-to-Run is optimized for home users on broadband connections. Programs delivered via Click-to-Run execute in a virtual application environment on your computer. This means that the programs have private copies of their files and settings, and that any changes they make are captured in the virtual environment.
Office applications like Excel and Word are not directly installed on the computer and rather on a virtual file system not accessible by a Windows user (not even administrator). You can continue to use Excel, Word as you know them but when it comes to Exporting to Office from NAV, we have a problem. NAV cannot seem to locate Excel and throws an error instead “It is not possible to locate the program ‘Microsoft Excel’ on your computer. Contact you system administrator.”
Why does this happen?
Simply because NAV tries to locate Excel in the registry with it’s otherwise default install path i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\EXCEL.exe but with Click-to-run this path does not exist since it’s managed by CVH.exe (a Virtual Handler) and the target path for Excel then becomes something like this: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Excel 2010 9014006204090000”
So how do we fix this?
There are a couple of methods but nothing as straight as installing an Office Professional edition. Click-to-run is delivered with Home and Business edition and if you plan on using it with NAV then it’s best to avoid the Home and Business edition. Recommended edition of Office for NAV would be Office Professional edition. This is not elaborated on the System requirements but we are pushing for that to happen.
