So the other day I was preparing a demo for a BCS presentation I will be doing next month. Everything was working fine right up until I wanted to demonstrate using an external data column within a Word document.
For some reason I was unable to set the value of the field from within Word. When I opened a Word document in the library it would pull the field in as set at the library level. When I added a Quick Part pointing to the field and attempted to make a selection I receive the error: “In order to pick external items you must have Microsoft Connectivity Services client components installed. For more information visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=257792”.
Turns out, I simply don’t know how to read instructions :-/ . For BCS client integration, Microsoft states you need to install SQL Server Compact 4.0, .NET Framework 4, and WCF Data Services 5.0 for OData V3 on the PC running the app. When I was preparing my environment I made the silly mistake of thinking since I wasn’t developing apps for the demo I didn’t need to install SQL Server Compact.
Once I corrected the mistake and installed SQL Server Compact the integration worked fine. Note: .NET 4.5 is fine.
Comments
Hi,
I have the same problem. Probably a strange question, but nevertheless: does these components need to be intsalled od the machine that is running sharepoint (server) or the machine that is running word (my pc)?
Kind regards,
Aleš
Hi Aleš, the components need to be running on the PC that is hosting Word. It shouldn’t need to be installed on the server.
Hi, thank you for your reply. I tried that but it didn’t work. We have sharepoint 2010 and word 2016 (i also tried with 2013). Is that combination (shpt 2010 and word 2016) even supported?
Kind regards,
Aleš
That’s a great question. I honestly don’t know. Haven’t tested it myself and haven’t seen any documentation stating either way. However, I have a feeling that your versions might be the issue. When I ran into the problem, I was running SP2013 and Word 2013.