Dear forum members:

Unfortunately I have an - for me - very urgent problem. I recently revised a very long macro and put it online. Now I got mails from users stating that they receive an "Automation error Unknown error" message once they open the Excel file. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce this problem directly on any of my computers - it works flawlessly here. On the net, I have only found some information that this error may be related to security updates KB2687441 (in Office 2007) or KB2597986 (in Office 2010).



The Excel file consists of many tables with VBA code, so I cannot post the complete macros here. Do you have a tip on how I could go to the source of the problem - maybe Excel puts an insightful log file somewhere, so that I can reproduce such a problem on my own machine in order to troubleshoot it?

So far, I have tried the following: On my computer, I renamed the registry key
HKCR\typelib\{831FDD16-0C5C-11D2-A9FC-0000F8754DA1}\2.0
to " 2.1" and added a new empty key "2.0". After this, I am getting this error message. With KB2687503 I can fix the error. But: How do I know if that is the problem for the other users? I would hate to let them test things stupidly.

Cheers,
Hlina

Maybe I'm just exposing my ignorance, but these users who are having the problem—do they get the "Debug"-button option? Because if they do, you can have them hit that button, then tell you what statement the macro bombed on. That, at least, would narrow it down for you.

If that button isn't offered, all that occurs to me is a) to go to one of their machines yourself, personally, and run and debug it there, or b) to select a reasonably savvy victim who's having the problem and seems up to learning a little; have that person put breakpoints at different places in the program and run it experimentally, narrowing the search until you've zeroed in on the place that's causing the problem. Oh, wait, you said this problem was occurring when they open the workbook, so no setting breakpoints. So they'd have to insert either Stop statements or MsgBox calls to accomplish the same thing. It's a pain, but it's at least guaranteed to get you eventually to the source of the problem.