Symptoms

The additional columns options added to Windows Explorer by BarTender (Template Size and Printer, for example) disappear shortly after being configured.

Environment 

BarTender 2019 and later.

Diagnosis

If the Microsoft Office suite of applications is installed after BarTender is installed, the BarTender Shell Extension appears to be corrupted or removed. This causes all Columns in Windows Explorer added by BarTender to disappear.

Solution

First, try to Repair the BarTender installation by going to Add or Remove Programs and clicking Modify on BarTender. If this doesn't work, follow the steps below:

1. Open a Command Prompt with Administrator rights by right-clicking on the Command Prompt icon and selecting Run as Administrator.

2. Run this command:

•   cd "C:\Program Files\Seagull\BarTender 202X\"

3. Run this command:

• register.exe - PropertyFile "C:\Program Files\Seagull\BarTender 202X\Components\x64\BarTenderMetadata.propdesc"

4. Run this command:

• register.exe + PropertyFile "C:\Program Files\Seagull\BarTender 202X\Components\x64\BarTenderMetadata.propdesc"

This solution should resolve the issue. If the issue recurs, you can add the commands above to a batch file to run in a Windows Scheduled Task every day. See the Stack Overflow article below for instructions on how to do this.

Additional resources

• How to run a batch file with Windows Task Scheduler