Purpose:
to provide a packaging recommendations when dealing with Microsoft office attachments opening from mail clients.
Problem:
When using mail clients (non-microsoft) to open office suite attachments and to be able to read/edit attachments seamlessly.
1. open an attachment inside of thunderbird
2. select open with
3. In this example Powerpoint will open in protected Mode and try to do a repair.
4. the repair will fail
5. the attachment is unable to open
Cause:
The fslx driver is unable to find some set of dlls and regkeys to properly open office directly of the mail client inside of a layer.
Workarounds:
When opening attachments you can save the attachment to the local disk with save as and then opening the files from the disk.
Package Thunderbird and older version of office in a layer (NOTE: this will cause the mail client layer to be larger) see https://symantec.box.com/s/bri80upf2yjo2cr47htta0v8jskq2im6 as example where the Thunderbird and office 2007 is in the same layer. I have removed some files and registry keys so that attachments will still open correctly.
In this example office 2016 installed to the base and Thunderbird and some of office 2007 in a layer.
In this example the attachments open up successfully and does not start a repair on office that is installed to the base. In these tests the attachments open in office that is installed to the base and not in the layer. Office and windows file association will open files with the newest release that the file association is set to.
In the screen shot below the layer with office is highlighted in blue. Note you must import the layer first and then install office 2016 for it to open correctly in the right version. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2784668 for running multiple versions of office.
![thunderbird3.png]()
Now when we open attachments
PackagingHelp:
According to Symantec’s support policy with packaging (see https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.INFO3514.html). You can contact some partners that can help do further packaging.