Released on March 2013, the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) has been updated to v1.1 and includes many new features. For those who do not know, the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool or OffCAT provides a quick way to analyze several Microsoft Office programs for common configurations that may be a cause for problems.
Office Configuration Analyzer Tool – OffCAT
The Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool provides a detailed report of your installed Office programs and highlights known problems. For any problems that are listed in the report, you are provided with a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article that can help you solve the problem.
Office Configuration Analyzer Tool v1.1 includes some new features:
- Option to scan All Office programs – Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Visio and Word
- CalCheck v2.1.1 included
- Option to update rule files without prompting
- Alternative rule file download location
- Additional group policy support
- New ‘Options’ page
- Default folder for saving scans
- Theme color
- A command-line version that can be used to collect a OffCAT scan without user intervention.
Once you have downloaded and installed OffCAT, you can click on the Start a Scan link and select if you want to scan any one or all of your installed Microsoft Office programs. The scan will take less than 5 minutes, and once it is completed, you will be informed about it.
To view the reports, click on the View Report link and view the reports you want to see. If there are any problems, they will be mentioned, along with the Help links.
You can view this Getting Started with OffCAT video to get a better idea on how to use the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool.
The Office Configuration Analyzer Tool can be very useful for Help Desk folks and other users, too, to proactively identify possible issues with the installed Microsoft Office programs.
This tool has replaced the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool. The OffCAT tool provides all of the same functionality as the OCAT tool, but it also allows you to scan more Office programs.
UPDATE: Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) was removed from the Microsoft Download Center on June 11, 2018. The Outlook scanning functionality of OffCAT is available in the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365 (SaRA) tool. SaRA offers several improvements, including the ability to identify and fix specific issues in Outlook, Office Setup, OneDrive for Business, and several other Office programs. You can use the SaRA tool is used to scan for issues in Outlook.
Here is a list of some Office 365 Troubleshooting Tools that may help you troubleshoot Office 365 issues.
