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Situation: big huge Excel VBA project, running in Excel 2003. Tons of code, been running for years. The December 2014 update from Microsoft that broke Active-X controls for everybody, just got installed on my machine, and hey, it broke for me too. Okay, StackOverflow to the rescue, found the solution, and deleted the .EXD files. Reboot.

Small problem: no help.

Partial workaround: I put "buttons" (not "command buttons" -- which are Active-X controls) on the worksheet, and I can start things running with those. Problem: when the VBA code goes to change a cell on the worksheet, it gets an Application Error, as if it isn't allowed to do so. Because this code has run for years & years, I'm pretty certain that it's the December update bug that's killing me here. Plus, the Active-X buttons still do nothing.

Question: what other steps beyond deleting the .EXD files & rebooting, specific to Excel 2003, need to be taken? ("Remove all VBA code, save, and restore the code" is a non-starter; far, far too much code to contemplate that, and how much I'd likely break along the way.)

Thanks for the help!

Community
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Ralph J
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4 Answers4

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We had a stubborn machine at ours recently - the ActiveX bug would not go away.

I realise this sounds silly but re-install all the updates from MS - all the updates which caused the problem in the first place. Then run the fix again. This fixed ours.

Also did you try both Fixit buttons: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3025036/en-us

whytheq
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  • Can't break it any worse! I'll give that a shot & report back, thanks! – Ralph J Mar 17 '15 at 20:02
  • Try - logically at a loss to know why the fix suddenly worked once we'd reinstalled the guilty security update but it did. If the security update was not properly installed then why was ActiveX broken? – whytheq Mar 17 '15 at 20:03
  • Hey, it's Microsoft, it doesn't have to make sense, right? :-) Okay, dumb question, but in Windows 7, where do I start in order to RE-install an update that Windows Update thinks is okay? (Updating Windows clearly isn't my great strength!) – Ralph J Mar 17 '15 at 20:32
  • No joy finding a way to reinstall the update, but Windows Update let me revert to an earlier state, and that worked. Details in the Answer I posted. Thanks for coming on & engaging -- got my mind working in the right direction to arrive at the solution that worked. – Ralph J Mar 17 '15 at 22:48
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I realize this is an older post, but maybe this will help someone else. I struggled with this one for quite awhile, finally discovered four (4) Microsoft Office 2010 updates that were causing the Active-X problem with xl2003. After removing them, everything worked fine. One or more of these updates have accidentally been installed since, and xl2003 is immediately broken - removing them always sets everything straight again, so I'm quite confident about this.

I'm running Win 7 64 bit.

Here are the updates:

KB2553154
KB2965291
KB2920813
KB3054873

DaveU
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For over a year, on and off, I wanted to use ActiveX embedded in a worksheet controls in Excel 2003. Almost always they did not work. I have sorted the problem out on about a dozen machines with operating system of XP, Vista and Win 7. Most had Office 2003, Office 2007 or higher. If you are having issues with ActiveX embedded in a worksheet controls in Excel 2003, then, starting at the top, deinstall these updates:

  • KB3054873
  • KB2965286
  • KB2920813
  • KB4011203

  • KB2920794

  • KB2553154

  • KB2965291

  • KB2596744

  • KB2687441
  • KB2817330
  • KB3118304
  • KB3141535
  • KB3191837
  • KB3203436

  • KB3213640

  • KB974554 (possibly leave this last one in initially. It may be OK.)

In addition, the updates below stop almost everything from working on XP. If you have XP, then you will almost certainly want to deinstall these updates:

  • KB4461522 ( no longer available )
  • KB4461614
  • KB4462174
  • KB4462157
  • KB4464566

More information: proc entry pt "GetDataFormEX" not found in the DLL "KERNEL32 (eileenslounge.com)

proc entry pt EnumCalendarInfoExEx not found in KERNEL32 (eileenslounge.com)

I have a more detailed report on what I have done posted in a few other places, for example:

Alan Elston
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What ended up working was going back to a restore point from a few weeks ago. Completed the restore, rebooted, removed the two .EXD files (dunno if this mattered; abundance of caution), rebooted again, and when I fired up Excel, things worked as expected -- i.e. as they did before the Windows Update.

This episode has me seriously pondering the risk/reward of EVER allowing Windows Update to run on this particular machine... for all of the risky things that I don't do (opening random Office documents from strangers, for instance), it seems like a lot of the benefits of all the updates are pretty far off into the realm of hypothetical, while the risks of another mess like this are quite clearly NOT just hypothetical.

Leave it to Microsoft to break a program that's running perfectly well, and even 3 months later their "fix" is neither automated nor comprehensive. /venting

Ralph J
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  • I'm in the same situation, Excel 2003 and Win 7, and none of the fixes have worked for me. I even uninstalled & re-installed all the updates, to no avail. Hoping for something soon, as I need to stay with xl2003. – DaveU Mar 20 '15 at 04:12