Office SP2 update causes Excel automation crash!

[Rob Schripsema]

Help!

A client's server was automatically updated to MS Office 2003 SP2 at 3am
this morning. Normally this would be wonderful, but a Windows Service that I
had written, that runs on that server, and that utilizes Excel is now
crashing everytime it tries to open (via automation) a spreadsheet. Aarghhh!

The Event Log says first, "Rejected Safe Mode action: Microsoft Office
Excel."

Next event in the log says, "Faulting application excel.exe, version
11.0.6560.0, stamp 4296b6f2, faulting module mso.dll, version 11.0.6568.0,
stamp 42e18ef6, debug? 0, fault address 0x0003446c."

This application has been working just flawlessly for over a year, and was
working fine yesterday. As of the update at 3am this morning, it stops
working. I have to assume there's a connection.

Anybody able to give me a clue?

Rob Schripsema
DeWaard and Jones Company

 

[Mark Lincoln]

To hazard a general guess (I have Excel 97 here), I would check
settings related to macros and security. You may have to allow macros
without digital signatures.

 

[keepITcool]

Rob.

Office starts in safe mode when one of it's startup services fails.
So it gives you an error message telling you it's starting in safe
mode.

Open Excel interactively. Go Help > About and click the Disabled Items
button. To fix the problem might be as simple as re-enabling the
disabled service."

 

[keepITcool]

i got updated overnight too,

there seems to be a bug in the SP2 regarding the Drawing Toolbar.

in my original installation i had disabled ClipArt in Office setup the
entire tree Office SharedFeatures/ClipOrgananizer was set to
NotAvailable.


I narrowed it down to the visibility of the Drawing Toolbar.
Displaying that ran without problems in SP1 (even with clipart
disabled.)

After installing SP2 excel continuously disaplys error messages
"Can't display Clipart"", while the "Drawing" Toolbar is visible.
and ClipArt is not installed.

HTH.

 

[Rob Schripsema]

Thanks for the note. Turns out, however, it was something completely
different.

We're going against Microsoft's current recommendations and using Office
Automation (of Excel) as part of a Windows Service that periodically checks
an email queue, extracts spreadsheet attachments, parses them, and applies
order data they contain (after much validation checking) to an order
fulfillment queue.

The line in my app (C#) that says, "ExApp = new Excel.Application();" has
worked flawlessly -- until the update. Suddenly it was causing the internal
fault that killed the process.

I was also using something less than a "best practice" in that we were
running the service under the LocalSystem account. Again, has worked just
fine for a long time.

Solution: Create a local machine user account on the server, and run the
service under that account instead.

Everything is working just fine now.

Hope that helps somebody else! And I've learned my lesson. AND, the client
will be encouraged to fund the development required to create a web service
to handle incoming orders, rather than having spreadsheets mailed in. Of
course, that will also mean the dozens of clients they have who are already
emailing in these spreadsheets will have to change all of their practices as
well. ($igh).

Rob