When a version of Microsoft Word 2010 or later is installed on the same environment as ERA, you will receive the following error when trying to run a Word report:
While ERA is compatible with all versions of Word, it’s configured to work with Word 2007 by default. The DDE referenced in the error message stands for Dynamic Data Exchange, which is a set of messages and guidelines used to exchange data between applications (Word and ERA in this case). As such, a registry entry exists specifically for DDE and Word 2007, which prevents reports from launching with later versions of Word.
To resolve this, you’ll need to add new registry entries for your version of Microsoft Office. To simplify this process, we’ve created a script that can be run on each computer that's running ERA. This will automatically add the new Word and DDE registry entries.
To run the script:
- To download the ddeexec.reg.txt file, click this link, then click Download in the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Place the ddeexec.reg.txt file on the desktop of the affected machine.
- Right-click the file, then click Rename to remove the .txt file name extension. The full name of the file should then be ddeexec.reg. If you can't see the file name's extension:
- Open Windows Explorer.
- Navigate to the Desktop folder.
- Click View in the toolbar.
- Select the File name extensions checkbox.
- Double-click the file, which will display a warning similar to the one below:
- Click Yes. A message will confirm that the keys and values contained in the file have been successfully added to the registry.
- Log into ERA. You will now able to run a report from Microsoft Word.