Enable Microsoft Office binary file format support

For new customers, Wordbee Beebox is a 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) application. This section of the documentation is retained for existing customers who have the application installed on a local server.

Beebox processes new Office file formats such as .docx, .xlsx or .pptx out of the box and without having to install Office.

The older binary formats such as .doc, .xls or .ppt require installation of Microsoft Office on the Beebox server.

If you fail to process binary formats, please read instructions below.

Enable binary formats

We assume that Microsoft Office 2010 or later is installed. Open Word, Excel, Powerpoint to make sure everything works fine. Then proceed as follows:

Login to the Beebox server as administrator

Create these two directories:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop

C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop

Test if your Beebox can now process Office files.

If this does not work, contact Wordbee support or look at this alternative solution.

Background information for technical readers

Office 2003 originally permitted automation from non-interactive users such as a Windows service. This feature disappeared from subsequent Office versions. The official Microsoft solution is to create an interactive user on the server, assign to the Beebox Windows service and to the Office DCOM profile. This approach is described here. The much simpler solution above is creating the directories that are required by Office to store user profiles for non-interactive users. It is these directories that Office 2003 created by default.