Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Microsoft Publisher Cannot Load the Speller or Dictionary

The other day, while working in Microsoft Publisher, one of my clients was greeted with the following message: 

Publisher cannot load the speller or dictionary. To install the Spell Checker and Hyphenation dictionary, run Publisher Setup again and choose Custom Installation. For information on running Setup, Press F1. 

Microsoft Publisher Search

My client was using Publisher 2016 as part of the Microsoft Office 365 E3 suite on a Windows 10 Pro computer.

It turns out the fix was simple enough. 

I ran a Quick Repair of Microsoft Office. Once the Quick Repair was completed, I opened Microsoft Publisher and Spell Checker and Dictionary was once again working. If you need instructions on how to run a Quick Repair on Office continue reading: Continue reading

Microsoft Excel Documents Open to Blank Grey Screen

When working on Microsoft Excel issues, I commonly come across an the issue of Microsoft Excel sheets opening to a blank grey screen.

Typically, this occurs when you double-click an Excel in File Explorer, it “opens” but only to a blank grey screen.Microsoft Excel 2016 Grey Screen

The most common time I see this error is when Office 2007 or Office 2010 was removed and Microsoft 2016 was installed. 

If the above statement is true, than more than likely this quick fix should work for you. 

Step One: Close all Microsoft Office programs

Step Two: Go to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a Program

Step Three: Find Microsoft Office 365 Program and Right-Click and select Change 

Microsoft Office 365 Change

Select Quick Repair

Quick Repair of Office 2016

Once the Office Quick Repair is complete, try opening an Excel document from File Explorer. It should open correctly now. 

My guess would be that it is a file association issue or something from the old Excel version that causes the issue.

Let me know if that worked by sounding off in the comment section. This was posted by techspeeder. 

If this helped you, consider helping me, by using my Amazon Affiliate link to keep this blog active and to buy an occasional coffee. 

Outlook 2016 Hang Freezes When Previewing an Excel File

I was troubleshooting a computer the other day that was having Outlook freezing issues. This is what would happen. When previewing an Excel attachment in Outlook (2016) the document would preview but as soon as you would scroll around on the attachment, Outlook would freeze. You couldn’t open, close, or minimize Outlook. However, if you went into Task Manager to kill the program, Outlook appeared to be working normally and didn’t mention “Not Responding”.

After a bit more troubleshooting, I found when Outlook froze up, if I opened a File Explorer Window it would unfreeze Outlook and I could once again use. 

Another item I noticed was Outlook seemed to freeze when I used my mouse scroll wheel instead of the scroll bars on the previewed Excel document. I tried my hypothesis a couple times and sure enough, each time I scrolled the previewed Excel document with my mouse scroll wheel Outlook would freeze up.

Troubleshooting Steps I tried:

  1. I installed the latest Office updates.
  2. I opened Outlook in Safe Mode.
  3. I made sure all Add-Ins were disabled. 
  4. I ran Outlook as an Administrator
  5. I disabled all Preview Handlers in Outlook and then re-enabled. 

Continue reading

QuickBooks Database Manager: Windows Firewall is Blocking Quickbooks

A client was using Quickbook Pro 2015 on Server 2012 Essentials. Every time I would run the QuickBooks database Manager I would receive an error similar to the following:

Windows firewall: Disabled exceptions not defined
Network Diagnostics: Failed. Resolve errors and Retry!!

The above errors would persist even if the Windows Firewall was active or not. I had already added the necessary ports for Quickbooks in the Windows Firewall. You can find the necessary ports here. The necessary ports for Quickbooks 2015 are 8019, 56725, 55363-55367. Even after adding the above mentioned ports I was receiving the same Quickbooks Database error. After troubleshooting this issue for some time, I realized everytime that the Quickbooks database manager would run it would add an additional rule to the Windows Firewall. QuickBooks Pro 2015 Firewall Rules

The weird thing was that you could use Quickbooks even though this error was displayed in the Quickbooks Database Manager. However, nobody likes to see errors.

I did a deeper drive into the issue. This is what I found. 

I opened the Windows Firewall and found the following blocked ports:

2017-06-22 09:27:40 DROP UDP 169.254.4.254 255.255.255.255 58070 4994 51 – – – – – – – RECEIVE
2017-06-22 09:27:43 DROP UDP 169.254.4.254 255.255.255.255 58070 4994 51 – – – – – – – RECEIVE
2017-06-22 09:27:46 DROP UDP 169.254.4.254 255.255.255.255 58070 4994 51 – – – – – – – RECEIVE

I didn’t find these ports documented anywhere on QuickBooks support, so I decided to add those ports in the firewall. Quickbooks Pro 2015 Firewall Ports

Once I added those ports I ran the Quickbooks Database Manager everything came back successful!Quickbooks Database Manager

If you are having the same error above, try adding the ports I have mentioned in this article. If those ports don’t work, check your Windows Firewall logs and see if the Quickbooks Database Manager is using alternate ports. If you need help configuring the Windows Firewall logging, check this link

I hope this helps. This was posted by techspeeder. 

 

 

Gmail POP Error in Outlook ” Receiving Reported Error (0x800CCC90)”

I ran into a problem the other day with Outlook throwing the following error when trying to pull email messages from Gmail: 

Outlook Error Message

Outlook Error Message

” Task “anybody@gmail.com” – Receiving reported error (0x800CCC90) : ‘Your incoming (POP3) e-mail server has reported an internal error. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). The server responded: – ERR Unable to retrieve rfc822msgid:xxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Every message in Gmail has a message ID assigned to it. You can find the Gmail Message ID by opening an email message and then clicking the down arrow beside the “Reply” arrow. 

Show Original Message ID

Show Original Message ID

Gmail Message ID

Gmail Message ID

More than likely the issue is that Outlook downloaded the message but Gmail says the message was not downloaded yet. This results in the error message referenced above. 

Here are the steps I used to resolve this issue. 

Step One: Log into Gmail on the web. 

Step Two: In the search box, in Gmail, search for the message referenced in your error message it should look similar to this: rfc822msgid:<31799347-9C90-4BBB-917D-CF95CCC21451>. Make sure to type the message ID exactly how it is referenced in the error message. Depending on the message ID you may need to add @domain after it like this: rfc822msgid:<54126538.1818.0@wordpress.com>  .

Rfc822msgid Search Result

Rfc822msgid Search Result

If you typed everything correctly, you should find the offending email message. You can double check to make sure the email message ID matching the message ID of the error you are receiving in Outlook.

Step Three: Delete the offending email message from Gmail.

Step Four: Go back to Outlook and do a Send/Receive. The error message should disappear. If the error message does not disappear you can check out this older post about this issue or perhaps their are multiple messages that need cleared from Gmail. 

I hope this helps. Sound off in the comment section if it helped or if you have additional questions.

This was posted by techspeeder.