Resolve Azure DevOps Office integration issues

  • Article

TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013

If you don't see the Team ribbon in Microsoft Excel, as shown in the image below, you may want to resolve the issue with the procedures provided in this article.

Excel TFS-Office integration Team ribbon

Important

Microsoft Project Integration and the TFSFieldMapping command are not supported for:

  • Visual Studio 2019 and Azure DevOps Office® Integration 2019
  • Azure DevOps Server 2019 and later versions, including Azure DevOps Services.

However, full support for Microsoft Excel integration is maintained and supports bulk import and update of work items. Alternatives to using Microsoft Project include the following:

Important

All Office integration tasks require that you have installed a version of Visual Studio or the free Azure DevOps Office Integration 2019. These software installs the Azure DevOps Office Integration Add-in or Team Foundation Office Integration Add-in For a list of prerequisites, see Azure Boards and Office integration.

Enable the Azure DevOps add-in

  1. From the Excel File menu, choose Options.

  2. Choose Add-ins and from the Manage picklist, choose COM Add-ins, and then choose Go.

    Excel Options, Add-ins, Choose Com Add-ins

  3. Make sure that a check is placed in the Team Foundation Add-in checkbox.

    COM Add-ins dialog, Team Foundation Add-in checked

  4. Restart Excel. You should now see the Team ribbon.

If the Team ribbon doesn't appear at next launch, the load behavior of the add-in may have changed and you'll need to complete the following steps:

Update the registry

  1. Launch the Registry Editor from your Windows Start Menu by typing regedit in the Search or Run box.

    Run regedit command

  2. Navigate to one of the following paths containing the TFCOfficeShim.Connect.[version] folder:

    Note

    If there are multiple folders with the same name, select the one with the highest version number.

    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins (if this key doesn't exist, try one of the options below)
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins

    LoadBehavior entry

  3. Double-click to open LoadBehavior and set the value data field to 3 (if the value is 0, the Team ribbon won't load).

  4. Press OK and restart Excel.

    To learn more about the LoadBehavior entry, see Registry Entries for VSTO Add-ins, LoadBehavior values.

Office add-in doesn't load or open in Excel when Visual Studio fails

To connect to Azure Boards or TFS, go to the Team ribbon and choose New List. If the New List dialog fails to open, or you receive TF86001 or similar error message, follow the steps below to ensure that policy redirection is configured.

TF86001 error message, Team Foundation was unable to load the Office Add-in

This error is typically caused when you install Visual Studio before you install Office Excel or Project. In this instance, the Visual Studio Tools for Office Run Time aren't correctly configured. To correct this error, you must repair Visual Studio.

Note

For authentication issues, such as TF31003 and TF30063, please refer to User account does not have permission.

Prerequisites

Install Visual Studio to ensure that you have access to the Visual Studio Command Prompt and the Gacutil.exe (Global Assembly Cache Tool). If you don't have Visual Studio, you can install the Visual Studio Community edition for free.

Run the Gacutil tool

  1. Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt and choose to run it as an administrator.

    Developer Command Prompt for VS2015 start menu with 'Run as administrator

  2. For Office 2016 and Office 2013, run the following commands:

    GACUTIL /I C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Policy.12.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel\15.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Policy.12.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll

    GACUTIL /I C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Policy.12.0.office\15.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Policy.12.0.Office.dll

    For Office 2010, run the following commands:

    GACUTIL /I C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Policy.12.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel\14.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Policy.12.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll

    GACUTIL /I C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Policy.12.0.office\14.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Policy.12.0.Office.dll

  3. Once you've successfully run the GACUTIL commands, restart Excel and look for the Team Foundation Add-in.

If the above steps are unsuccessful, try the following steps:

  1. Run a full repair of Office.

  2. Uninstall Office and Reinstall Office.

  3. Contact the Microsoft support team.