OMPM, OEAT, and OCCI frequently asked questions

We get a lot of questions about our Office 2010 compatibility tools here on the blog and in our forum. We've assembled the ones we hear most often and provided answers below.

Not familiar with our compatibility tools? You can find links to downloads, documentation, and more on our Compatibility Resource Center. The tools have long names so we'll refer to them by their acronyms:

  • OMPM (Office Migration Planning Manager)
  • OEAT (Office Environment Assessment Tool)
  • OCCI (Office Code Compatibility Inspector)

Have a question about these tools? Submit your question as a comment to this post or in the Office 2010 Application Compatibility forum on TechNet.

Migration questions

Q: Can the 2010 versions of OMPM and OCCI be used for migrating to the 2007 Office system?

A: The improvements in OMPM and OCCI were designed specifically to support the deployment of Office 2010. Therefore, we don't recommend using these tools as part of  2007 Office system migrations.

Q: Can OMPM be used for migrating from the 2007 Office system to Office 2010?

A: OMPM offers VBA macro scanning for Office 2007 .docm, .xlsm, and .pptm file types, but there is no 2007=>2010 conversion functionality in the Office File Converter (OFC) tool because both versions of Office use the OpenXML format. 

Comparing Office 2010 compatibility tools

Q: Why does OMPM find so many more VBA issues than OCCI does?

A: When you run OMPM, it makes comparisons across the entire Office object model (all applications) instead of just those referenced in a document project. Therefore, you may have more false positives. OMPM is designed to provide you a list of documents that you may need to remediate by using OCCI. OMPM finds a larger list of documents that might need to be remediated and OCCI is then used to narrow them down to a more finite set. You can find more about this issue in a recent blog post.

Update: This issue has been fixed as of August 2011 in Update 1 of OMPM. See our recent blog post for more information.

OMPM questions

Q: Does OMPM convert Access databases or Outlook OFT or PST files?

A: No, the Office File Converter (OFC) feature in OMPM does not convert Access databases, OFT files, or PST files. The full list of files that can be converted is located in the Office Resource Kit on TechNet.

Q: Why is OMPM taking so long to finish scanning my file share?

A: OMPM requires time to scan each document for known compatibility issues. If you turn on the VBA scanner in offscan.ini, then the scan will take even longer. Here are some recommendations for speeding up the scan:

  • Distribute the scanner to individual clients and run the scanner locally instead of across the network. The scanner does not require Office 2010 to be installed on clients.
  • Run OMPM from the same network switch as the server in question. Running from across a WAN or slow link will take OMPM much longer to complete.
  • Scan fewer documents by limiting the date range for scanned documents.

Update: Scanning performance has been improved in the Update 1 version of OMPM (August 2011). See our recent blog post for more information.

OEAT questions

Q: Why are so few (or none) of my add-ins shown on the vendor list?

A: Microsoft provides a site on TechNet for add-in vendors to register their add-ins and update which versions are supported in Office 2010. As more vendors report their compatibility, this list of recognized add-ins will grow.

Q: I enabled passive scanning but it fails, and the message "SCAN: Error setting up passive scan. Some or all identity references could not be translated." appears in the errors.log file

A: This error message appears when client computers are running localized versions of Windows in which the names of security groups are not in English. The failure occurs because OEAT has a hard-coded dependency on the English name of the Everyone group. In clients that use a language version other than English, the Everyone group might be localized for the specific language of the client. On these clients, passive scanning fails.

The workaround is to create a local group named Everyone, and then add the localized Everyone group to that group.

Update: This issue has been fixed as of August 2011 in Update 1 of OEAT. See our recent blog post for more information.

OCCI questions

Q: Can OCCI be deployed silently?

A.  Yes, you can invoke a silent installation by calling the msi installer for the OCCI – setupOCCI.msi /quiet. However, because you are calling the msi and not the setup.exe, you have to take care to install the pre-reqs. Note that with the current version of OCCI, the user will see the "Publisher cannot be verified" dialog box on first launch. Also, note that you can’t control what apps the add-in is installed for, and thus it loads for all options as default.

Q: How can I run OCCI silently without any user interaction? Or, how can I run OCCI to analyze many documents at once?

A: You cannot run OCCI without user interaction, nor can you use it to analyze multiple documents at once. OMPM is the only tool provided by Microsoft that can perform bulk macro scanning.

Q: I have configured Office to run only signed add-Ins. With this setting enabled, OCCI does not start. How can I make my system trust the publisher?

A: This is known issue. The OCCI installer was not properly signed and thus it comes from an unknown publisher. If Group Policy is configured to require that application add-ins are signed by trusted publisher, you must disable this setting.

Q: Is the report generated by OCCI exhaustive enough that a developer could make the code changes on the issues outlined by the OCCI report without additional testing of their VBA applications?

A: OCCI was designed to provide remediation guidance, not automated remediation. We recommend that you test your application as you normally would. When an error occurs, use the comments that OCCI provides to help you remediate the problem area in your application.

Q: Why do the links in the OCCI results link to generic Office object model documentation?

A:   The tool was built to reference the MSDN documentation for object model changes.  We monitor these topics and will offer more specific guidance for the most frequently accessed topics. You can help us improve the tools by simply using the tool and using the provided links.