After updating SharePoint 2013 to November 2017 CU or later you may not be able to open documents with Office

  • [アーティクル]

*** UPDATED TO INCLUDE Stefan Gossner and Adam Soreson's INPUT ***

Symptom

After updating SharePoint 2013 to November 2017 CU from a previous version you will not be able to open Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) but other types of documents like .txt and .pdf files can be opened. There is no indication of the error in the ULS log.

Observing the network activity using a tool like Telerik's Fiddler, you will notice that the response from cellstorage.svc is 400 (bad format) or 401 (unauthorized). This is why the Office Integration piece fails and other file types succeed. The failed request will look like:

 POST /_vti_bin/cellstorage.svc/CellStorageService

Cause

November CU brings a breaking update to stssoap.dll. This dll is normally cached in the _app_bin folder of the web application and it does get updated at the 15 hive bin folder but not at the local web applications bin folder.

For example, imagine a web application for portal.contoso.com, on location C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\portal.contoso.com80. You will find stssoap.dll in  C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\portal.contoso.com80\_app_bin\stssoap.dll version not to match the version in C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\CONFIG\BIN\stssoap.dll.

The main cause for this is that the update was not done properly (i.e. via Wizard or using all the appropriate commands via PSConfig).

 

Resolution

The DLL version in the 15 hive should be at 15.0.4981.1000 (10/17/2017) or higher. The local version in local bin should be dated before 10/17/2017. If this is not the case, this solution does not apply to you. The solution also applies to you if the version in 15 hive is newer than the version of the local bin for future stssoap.dll changes.

Make sure you run the update properly. Always prefer to use Configuration Wizard over PSConfig to update.

This command should update only the web applications _app_bin, but this is not the best solution:

 PSConfig.exe -cmd applicationcontent -install

See more details here.

The best solution is to run the configuration Wizard or to emulate all the steps of the configuration wizard using this:

 PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources -cmd services -install

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2017
    Hi Rodney,in my test this dll is correctly updated when running the config wizard or running PSConfig with -cmd applicationcontent parameter as discussed here:https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/stefan_gossner/2015/08/20/why-i-prefer-psconfigui-exe-over-psconfig-exe/Cheers,Stefan
  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2017
    Thanks for posting the issue and the resolution
  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2018
    This resolution is not working for me.
    • Anonymous
      January 05, 2018
      What’s the version of your stssoap.dll?
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2018
    "applicationcontext"Please, never post a code/script if you didn't test it before ?
    • Anonymous
      February 06, 2018
      Good catch. Thanks
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2018
    One behavior you'll see in Fiddler is 401s being tossed by cellstorage.svc. This is why the Office Integration piece fails.POST /_vti_bin/cellstorage.svc/CellStorageService
  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2018
    We applied November 2017 CU for SharePoint 2013, everything seem to be good , Timer job History is at level 10,000 rows now which is expected, before it was around 43 Million), However there was one Specific job called " NewsGator Unanswered Questions Notification Job" (Sitrion Product job).This Job used to run every hour before Patch and still run every hour after patch, Strange issue is Moderator/Question replier started getting Notification every hour instead of Every day if they don't give Answers I am not sure if this could be something related or any such reported issues ? since lot of history deleted( around 5,6 days History ) any chance it couldn't reference older than hour data in History and thinks Answer didn't got replied and would had sent Another emails ?
    • Anonymous
      March 21, 2018
      Hi Stefan /Rodney , Any clue/idea on my earlier post about Timer Job &Notification ?
    • Anonymous
      April 05, 2018
      The comment has been removed
      • Anonymous
        April 13, 2018
        The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2018
    After December 2017 CU upgrade in our Sharepoint farm we're unable to save files from client MS office to sharepoint Library. As per checking stssoap.dll version looks good. Upon checking the ULS we do not see any cellstorage.svc calls being made. Is this also a bug related to December 2017 CU ? Kindly help
    • Anonymous
      August 06, 2018
      It is not a bug, it is update done wrongly. Run the wizard instead and if it fails, you may need to open a support case or create a forum post asking for help
  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2018
    i am having issue with SharePoint 2016 while opening office documents it says file cannot be opened. My SP2016 is being integrated with SiteMinder . While everything works normally on Internet Explorer the only problem is with when Chrome is being used to open the documents. Could someone suggest on what should be I am missing in terms of something.
  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2018
    We have seen a similar issue arise after the September 2018 security releases for SharePoint 2013. Users are unable to open, and save, MS Excel documents that are stored in SP Document Libraries. This issue is not affecting all users. There were no issues before these patches were released. It appears that all our .DLL files are on the same version, 15.0.4763.1000 (stssoap.dll, Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.dll). Is it possible that this issue could be caused by simply installing patches in the wrong order, even though the versions seem to match?
  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2019
    Great Post !one of my clients had release all updates through wsus to his sp 2013 farm.and problems with documents had started, i'd found the cellstorage + 401 error in the uls.and then searched for it and came to this post.thanks alot!