We have determined that a recent update to Microsoft Office, published by Microsoft on 08/12/2025 prevents the DB Precision Heartbeat Monitor (DBPHBM) from being able to open Microsoft Word documents.

Please note that this update to Office does not impact DB Precision running in a desktop session by a user, or when running as an Internet Controller (but without DBPHBM). If your version of Office is a version that is published on or after 08/12/2025, then you will have problems once Office is updated.

For customers that have not already updated Office to this version, we are asking that you configure the Internet Controller to not update Microsoft Office to a newer version (as described below) until we can determine the best way to resolve this new incompatibility. For customers that have already updated to this or a later version of Microsoft Office, we are asking that you roll back the Office update.

To check which version of Office you are running on the Internet Controller server, please do the following:

• Open Microsoft Word
• Open Account Screen: Select Account on the main Word ribbon.
• Open About Microsoft Word Screen: Press the About Word button. There, you will see a number that is four numbers separated by periods (ex. 16.0.19029.20208). If the last two numbers are greater than or equal to the following, then you will need to revert Office to a lower version as described below or run DBP without using DBPHBM on the Internet Controller.
  
  Office 2019, 2021, 2024, 365: problem versions start with 19029.20184 (last two numbers) or greater. Must revert to 19029.20136
  

If you have not yet updated Microsoft Office on the Internet Controller to the version described above, you should turn off Office updates for now (only on the Internet Controller servers) and no further action is required.

To turn off Office updates, please do the following:

• Open Microsoft Word
• Open Account Screen: Select Account on the main Word ribbon.
• Turn Off Updates: Press the Update Options button and choose Disable Updates

If your Internet Controller has already been updated to the version described above, we recommend that you do the following:

• Download the Microsoft Office Deployment Tool: This can be downloaded from Microsoft using the following link: Microsoft Office Deployment Tool
• Run the Downloaded Deployment Tool: Run the downloaded executable above. This will ask you to select a location to put the setup file (ex "c:\temp").
  
  Once run, you will see two files in the specified folder, 1) "Setup.exe", and 2) "configuration-Office365-x64.xml".
• Create XML Configuration File: In the same folder as the two files created above, create a text file (Right Click - New - Text Document) and copy/paste the following into this text document. Then save the file with the name "Config.xml". Make sure that ".xml" is the file extension and not ".txt". Note that the first 2 numbers (16.0 in the example below stay the same from update-to-update so you will need to create your own number by replacing those 2 numbers below using those first 2 numbers from your existing version number and then adding "19029.20136" below).
  
  <Configuration>
     <Updates Enabled="TRUE" TargetVersion="16.0.19029.20136" />
  </Configuration>
  
• Run Setup.exe in Folder: This will configure the next Office update to revert to this earlier version of Office.
• Run Office Update: Open Microsoft Word and select Account - Update Options - Update Now.
• Reboot Server and Confirm DBPHBM is Able to Process Word Documents