Office 2013 thinks it's offline when Secureline engaged

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That's my problem in a nutshell. I've used Secureline for a few months, and after a glitch in getting it to initially accept my license (solved with a call to support, who sent a new self-executing license file), it's been great. It stays connected, doesn't seem to hamper my speed much, and works as advertised. Except that none of my Office 2013 functions think they are connected to the internet when it's engaged. This is problematic, since I store all my office files to the cloud. So simply saving a file requires shutting down Secureline. Anyone else experience this? I'm running Office 2013 on a Win 7 Pro laptop.

[irongod]

  I am using your same config (apart Win 7 Home Premium instead of Pro) and I am evaluating the purchase of Secureline license... thus I am interested on how it evolves this thread! 

Does OneDrive works correctly as stand alone client?

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It seems to. I submitted a ticket on this, did a big uninstall/cleanup/reinstall, messed some other things up in the process (of course), but got it all running again and now am having mixed results with Office "seeing" the internet connection. I'll update here if I figure out why. Meanwhile, support says they will review the results of my log files and see if something can be done, but admit that some applications simply are "not compatible" with VPN. I have not pursued this through the MS end.

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Here's what's happening now. If I use Windows Explorer or whatever means to access an existing Office file on OneDrive, I can access and open it with Secureline engaged. The remaining glitch is when you create a new Office file and do an initial "save." The Onedrive screen that pops up in this situation has an error note at the top saying it appears you are not connect to the Internet (it's looking for your recently saved-to locations, recently opened folders, etc., I believe.) If you ignore this and hit the "Browse" button near the screen bottom, it opens up a file explorer window to Onedrive, and you can save the document there.

I am curious whether the integration is different/better on Win 8, which has a smoother interface with Onedrive in general. But I don't have Secureline installed on my Win 8 desktop.

[irongod]

  so it seems the system integrated in Office to manage files on cloud is not compatible with Secureline...while if the file is managed thru the usual Win file system everything works.

Have you tried to see if Sharepoint works? and what about the Office upload center? 

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Here's my final take on this: Secureline, in a nutshell, is not compatible with Office 365's OneDrive file system, at least in a Win7 environment. As I mentioned above, I can force it to save and retrieve files on occasion, but not through the OneDrive interface that MS puts forward everytime you go to save or recall. After a couple days' back and forth with Support -- during which they had me do all sorts of log-filing and other tasks, which ultimately screwed up my OS for a day (my fault; hit wrong button in trying to find a hidden folder needed for that task) -- Support informed me, flatly, that Secureline is NOT compatible with Office 365. And they directed me to an MS page of gibberish, just for good measure. (See copied email below.) So, there you go.

Secureline works well for me in general. It is not compatible with Office, and Avast clearly does not advertise this fact in its sales material. If you want to use a VPN on a regular basis, and don't want to have to deactivate it everytime you save or access a OneDrive file, it should work for you. If this bugs you, don't buy it. It's not clear to me whether this is a universal problem with other VPNs, but I would think that the MS people, given that they are catering to business users, would have worked that problem out to some degree.

Begin copied note from Support:

Hello,

Thank you for your information and opinion. We are sorry for your inconvenience but MS office 365 has some specific conditions as you ca see e.g. here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn509532.aspx

and there can be many another that aren't described in this document. Anyway we don't declare avast VPN is compatible with Office 365. We will monitor the situation in our customer base. The case has been closed.

Best regards,

Avast Software s.r.o 2nd level support team

[irongod]

Ok thanks! Nice to know!

nevertheless I am little wondering whether should have different behaviour on Win 7 and 8... I don't think it should be any difference since the issue seems to be related with the encryption and packaging system of the VPN rather than the OS itself...

[REDACTED]

Yes, good question. I would try it out and see on my Win 8 machine, but I believe the Secureline license is for only one PC.

[irongod]

you can use the same Secureline license on several PCs [no problems, I did that on my old laptops], the only restriction is that you cannot connect at the same time cause the servers will refuse!