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I'm trying to help a friend solve a minor annoyance on his Macintosh. Every time he restarts, it pops up a Microsoft Document Connection window that's asking to add a location (either a SharePoint site or an Office Live workspace). He's not interested in this feature, and he just wants it to stop bothering him.

I looked in the preferences, but couldn't see any options about start-up behaviour. I did some Google searches on "Microsoft Document Connection startup" but didn't find anything I could use.

How can I stop Microsoft Document Connection from popping up after every restart?

He has Microsoft Office 12.2.5 installed. He's running Finder 10.6.8.

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There're two ways things autostart on Mac OS X, one more technical & complicated than the other:

  1. Login Items: This can be found in System Preferences - Accounts - Login Items. See if the app is listed in there. If it is, remove it from the list and you're done. If this is not the case, move to step 2.

  2. launctl: launctl or Launch Control has a similar function than Login Items, but it runs in the background and isn't handled by users. It has no UI and is controlled via Terminal. Therefore, run the following command to see which services autostart on your Mac using launchctl:

    launchctl list
    

    This will show a list of all the services that run on your Mac. Go through the list and look for the relevant service. Most services will use bundle identifiers to identify themselves, so if you don't know how to obtain Microsoft Document Connection's identifier, do the following:

    Right click Microsoft Document Connection's dock icon and click on "View in Finder". Right click the application and click on "Show Package Contents". Then click on "Contents" and then on "Info.plist". There, you'll find the bundle identifier. It will probably look similar to this:

    com.microsoft.microsoftdocumentconnection
    

    Now that you have the identifier, look for it in the list. Once you've found it, enter the following:

    launchctl unload BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE
    

    Next, we'll need to remove the startup entry or the app will relaunch when your friend launches his/her Mac. To do this, simply enter into terminal:

    rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE.plist
    
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  • That did it, thanks. Some terms were slightly different for me: System Preferences - Accounts - Login Items.
    – Don Kirkby
    Apr 8, 2012 at 22:00
  • Sorry, I use a German Mac OS, so I translated what I saw :P Glad it got sorted out!
    – Pripyat
    Apr 8, 2012 at 22:02

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