CANDDi’s Outlook Plugin: FAQ

If you’ve got our Outlook plugin all set up, then this guide will run you through all the basics you need to know to get your email tracking up and running.

Firstly, how do I know it’s working?

Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, you will need to close Outlook and reopen it. At this point you may need to log in for the first time with your CANDDi login details.

After that, it should work in the background without you having to do anything, except emailing prospects one-to-one as much as possible. Remember to do this without CC or multiple recipients - and including compelling links to your website!

When you open a new message you will see ‘CANDDi Disabled’ in the top right. This is normal! Once you address the message to a valid recipient, it should change to ‘CANDDi Enabled’.

If you can’t see the CANDDi plugin in your message window, the plugin may be disabled in Outlook.

Go to ‘File’ > ‘Options’. Choose ‘Add-Ins’ on the left. ‘CANDDi for Outlook’ should be under ‘Active Add-Ins’. If it is under ‘Inactive Add-Ins’, you will need to go to ‘Manage Add-Ins’ at the bottom. Ti ck ‘CANDDi for Outlook’ to enable, and click OK.

If it is under ‘Disabled Items’ rather than ‘Inactive’, you will need to go to ‘Manage: Disabled Add-Ins’ instead. Then you will see this screen - select ‘CANDDi for Outlook’, and click enable. Now you should see the CANDDi plugin enabled when you are about to send your email.

Do I need a CANDDi login?

Your company needs to have a CANDDi dashboard of course, but if you don’t have access to the CANDDi login but have emails to track, you can get set up manually. Disable the login function before installing the plugin and follow these steps for installation:

1. Run StopLogin; you will need to ‘allow’ it to make changes to the registry.
2. Download the plugin from here.
3. Run the downloaded file, then close Outlook and reopen it. (If you get an error saying something about VSTO, please see contact your account manager.)
4. You should now be able to see the CANDDi Enabled/Disabled box when you are creating an email in Outlook.
5. If you want to re-enable the login prompt, please run StartLogin.

Do I have to track all my links?

Nope, not if you don’t want to. In the settings of your Outlook plugin, you’ll notice there is a tab titled: IGNORE LIST

You can add sites to this list that you don’t want to track. Mostly, this is useful for internal sites you don’t want CANDDi to track within your email.

Links aren’t taking recipients to the right page

This usually happens when there is a small bug on your website’s server, meaning that it won’t play nicely with CANDDi’s Outlook Plugin.

When the recipient clicks on the link within your email, they should see the web page followed by the four querystring parameters added onto the end of the links. This means that the CANDDi Outlook Plugin is working perfectly but something on the website isn’t letting the Plugin do its job.

This error usually happens when the recipient clicks through the link and goes onto the website, but the website returns an error such as ‘Record not found’.

When testing your website with a combination of querystrings (keys and values) the values seem immaterial but the key is if they have more than TWO numbers next to each other, it can fail and produce an error. The encrypted parameters from CANDDi often have two numbers next to each other - hence they will fail if your website does not allow this.

It could possibly be a problem with the mod_rewrite on your server being mis-configured.

For more support on this please speak with your Account Developer in the first instance.

In the meantime we would recommend uninstalling the CANDDi Outlook Plugin on any machines as any links it produces will fail.

Using the live feed

If you have the latest CANDDi Outlook Plugin installed, you will see a ‘Live Feed’ button at the top right-hand corner of Outlook.

This will allow you to view historic email ‘opens’ and also when a recipient has clicked on a URL sent to them.

Depending on your default browser, we recommend using Google Chrome for the Live Feed page. This is because you’ll be able to receive desktop notifications for an email open/click through.

My plugin is disabled

Sometimes Outlook may disable the plugin as Outlook believes the plugin slows down the application (which isn’t true). There are 2 ways to re-enable the plugin, depending on your browser. Follow the below steps:

1. Go to File - you should see ‘Slow and disabled COM Add-ins’ which is highlighted in yellow. Click on this.
2. If you see ‘CANDDi for Outlook’ click on ‘Always enable this add-in’.

If you don’t see ‘Slow and disabled COM Add-ins’, follow the below steps instead:

1. Go to File > Options > Add-ins
2. Click on ‘Go’ next to Manage COM Add-ins
3. Make sure ‘CANDDi for Outlook’ is the ticket. Click ‘Ok’
4. Restart Outlook

If you need help setting up CANDDi’s Outlook plugin, reach out to the team at help@canddi.com