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Compatibility files Windows 10: Tips and tricks for optimizing your system



The size of the Windows operating system that comes with your device and the amount of space needed to download and install Windows updates, are highly variable as they depend on a variety of factors. Visit here to learn why. The factors that impact the amount of free hard drive space needed to take an update include: the versions of Windows previously installed on the machine, the amount of disk space available to reuse from Windows files, such as the virtual memory pagefile or hibernation file, which applications are installed on your device and how those applications store data. Starting with the May 2019 Update, the system requirements for hard drive size for clean installs of Windows 10 as well as new PCs changed to a minimum of 32GB. The 32GB or larger drive requirement is set to leave space for users to install apps and to keep data on the device. Installing Windows or updating from a previous version of Windows on devices with less than 32GB storage will continue to work if the device has enough free space available. When updating, Windows will attempt to automatically free up enough hard drive space and guide you through freeing up even more if the automatic cleanup is not sufficient. You can also take steps to free up space on your own. For more information, see Free up space to install the latest Windows 10 update or visit the related FAQ.


The Readiness Toolkit for Office add-ins and VBA can help you identify compatibility issues with your Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros and add-ins that you use with Office. The Readiness Toolkit includes the Readiness Report Creator, which creates an Excel report with VBA macro compatibility and add-in readiness information to help your organization assess its readiness to move to Microsoft 365 Apps.




compatibility files windows 10




The Readiness Report Creator can scan for VBA macros in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Project, Visio, and Publisher files, for Office versions as far back as Office 2003. It can also scan for certain types of add-ins used with Office. Add-ins for all Office applications are identified, but it doesn't include web add-ins. For more information, see File extensions analyzed for VBA macros and Types of add-ins for which the Readiness Report Creator collects data.


By default, the Readiness Report Creator can't scan files that are saved in a SharePoint document library, in OneDrive, or in some other type of cloud-based storage location. If you try to scan one of these files, the file shows up as "Cloud-based" in the report. For a possible workaround, see How to scan cloud-based files.


We strongly recommend that you create an advanced report because an advanced report provides additional information to help you assess the compatibility of your VBA macros and add-ins with Microsoft 365 Apps. For example, in an advanced report, you get the following additional information:


File status: The report also categorizes, by a file status, the files that were scanned. The following table lists the possible file statuses that can appear in a readiness report, and an explanation of the file status.


By default, add-ins that are shipped by Office aren't shown. If you want to see information about those add-ins, select "Yes" from the drop-down list and refresh the report. But, most enterprises won't need to worry about application compatibility of add-ins that are shipped with Office.


If you have your users run the UI wizard version of the Readiness Report Creator, you end up with separate Excel files, one for each user. That makes it difficult to see readiness from a departmental or office-wide perspective. You also have to rely on the users to run the Readiness Report Creator and follow the instructions correctly.


The better alternative might be to use the command line capabilities of the Readiness Report Creator and use a script to run the Readiness Report Creator to collect the information on behalf of the user. You can save the files created by the Readiness Report Creator to a network share. If you do this, make sure that the appropriate write permissions are given to the share.


It's important to note that when you run the Readiness Report Creator from the command line, the Readiness Report Creator doesn't create an Excel file. Instead the Readiness Report Creator creates JSON files containing VBA macro and add-in information from the scan.


To create a consolidated Excel report from these various command line scans, you need to run the UI wizard version of the Readiness Report Creator. For the information source, select "Previous readiness results saved together in a local folder or network share," and then specify the location where you saved all the files for the scans. The Readiness Report Creator then consolidates the information from the JSON files into a readiness report in a single Excel file.


You can specify these labels by using the Specify custom labels to use with the Readiness Toolkit Group Policy setting. You can find this policy setting under User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016\Readiness Toolkit. Be sure to download the latest Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) for Office.


To collect add-in usage information, install the most current version of the Readiness Toolkit on each computer that you want to capture add-in usage information from. To enable the agent that generates and collects the add-in usage information, you need to enable the "Allow add-in usage data to be generated and collected by the Readiness Toolkit" Group Policy setting. This policy setting is available in the most current version of the Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) for Office that are available on the Microsoft Download Center. This policy setting is found under User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016\Readiness Toolkit.


To identify Office files that contain these controls, you can choose to scan all Office documents when you create a readiness report. This will scan all Office files, even if those files don't contain macros. Because more files are scanned, report creation will take longer.


By default, the Readiness Report Creator can't scan files that are saved in a SharePoint document library, in OneDrive, or in some other type of cloud-based storage location. If you try to scan one of these files, the file shows up as "Cloud-based" in the report.


One possible workaround is to scan the local cache of these cloud-based files on the user's computer. If the files are only stored in a cloud-based location, you can create a mapped network drive to a OneDrive or SharePoint share. Then, you can have Readiness Report Creator scan that drive. But, when this location is scanned, the files must be downloaded in memory to perform the scan. Depending on the number and size of those files, this could result in the scan taking significantly longer and using up a considerable amount of network bandwidth.


To find these files, run the Readiness Report Creator from an elevated command prompt and use the sigscan option. The following example command line will scan files in the vba_files folder and will create a JSON file in the vba_results folder with the results of the scan.


VBA macros are a common way for malicious actors to gain access to deploy malware and ransomware. Therefore, to help improve security in Office, we've changed the default behavior of Office applications to block macros in files from the internet. For more information, see Macros from the internet will be blocked by default in Office.


To identify files that have VBA macros that might be blocked from running, you can run the Readiness Report Creator from a command prompt and use the blockinternetscan option. For example, if you want to scan files in the c:\officefiles folder (and all its subfolders) on a device and save the JSON file with the results to the Finance share on Server01, you can run the following command.


The report created by the Readiness Report Creator uses macros and active content to display the information in the report. Therefore, to see the VBA macro compatibility and the add-in readiness information in the report, you need to allow macros and active content in Excel. If macros and active content aren't enabled in Excel, you see a Getting started message on the Overview worksheet when you open the report. On that page are instructions on how to enable macros and active content. This can be as simple as clicking Enable Content in the Message Bar.


Note that the Compatibility Files button is only available in Windows Vista and Windows 7. In Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 or later, the button has been removed. To view any compatibility files, you have to navigate manually to the folders as mentioned above:


To qualify for the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program, your product must pass certain tests using the Windows HLK.For guidance on which kit to use for compatibility certification, see the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program and the Windows Hardware Certification Blog.


Get the official Windows Hardware Compatibility playlist so you can run the Windows HLK tests that ensure your hardware meets the requirements for compatibility with Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows Server.


Your Mac comes with iCloud Drive, which lets you safely store all your presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, and any other kinds of files in iCloud. Then you can access them from any device, including your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.1


Thanks to its support for industry standards, macOS works with virtually all email providers and websites. It also lets you view the most common file types, including Office documents, PDFs, images, text files, MP3s, videos, ZIP files, and more.


In Windows 7 if an installed application attempts to write files in its application folder under Program Files, the files are actually written into a Compatibility files folder and in explorer you can navigate to this folder by pressing the Compatibility files button from inside the application folder. 2ff7e9595c


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