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We had the Office Store for add-ins disabled and were recently asked to enable it—or at least deploy a single Word add-in to one user.

We’re an on-prem shop with Entra Connect (no Exchange Hybrid). Most users have M365 licenses, and some use perpetual Office (2016–2021) + Business Basic (yes, we know 2016 hits EOL in October :sweat_smile:).

Tried Centralized Deployment, but the add-in didn’t appear for the Business Standard user. Tried Integrated Apps next (Microsoft’s “preferred” method), with the same result.

We waited, restarted Office/computer, signed in/out—no change after a day.

The add-in was deployed to my own account (perpetual + Business Basic)—still nothing, even on the Word web app, and even after enabling the Store org-wide.

Found this post post and applied these registry edits to my machine shortly after (1-2hrs) the Add-in store was enabled globally:

Added 32-bit DWORD disableomexcatalogs = 0 under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs

Deleted HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word (after backing up)

After a reboot, I suddenly had access to both the Store and the add-in (desktop + web). Unsure if it was the one of the registry edits, or both, or just that enough time passed for changes to propagate. Tried the same on the other user’s machine—no success… until ~4 hours later, when they reported it was working. Total time from start to working: ~32 hours.

Curious to see if the add-in would remain if the store was disabled again. No immediate change. Both of us still had access to the add-in and store. Re-enabled it to avoid potential issues.

Next day: I had the add-in and Store on desktop Word but lost them in Word Web (again, Business Basic). ~1 hour later, it returned.

So what’s my actual question? Did we butcher the process here and is there something we clearly missed/don’t understand, or is the process of deploying add-ins really this terrible?

2 Spice ups
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You didn’t butcher the process, but your on-premises setup with no Exchange Hybrid and mixed licensing made Centralized Deployment and Integrated Apps less reliable.

The delays (32 hours) and web app inconsistencies are typical of propagation and caching issues. The registry edits helped clear local obstacles but weren’t a complete fix. For better results, use a SharePoint App Catalog, run the Compatibility Checker, standardize Office versions, and allow ample time for propagation.