"File Format No Longer Supported" in Excel 2010 for our COM library

1
votes

Asking on this is a bit of a shot in the dark but we've exhausted all other options unfortunately.

Our software package's .exe file exposes a COM library which many customers use through VBA functions in their Excel spreadsheet.

One particular customer recently reinstalled Windows, and then upgraded their version of our software package and now get this error message when trying to import our exe into Excel as a COM reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/gg264377.aspx

Has anyone ever seen this before? The software is made using Borland Delphi 7 but I'm not sure if that makes much of a difference.

Looking in registry our GUID for the COM library is there, with the correct file location. We've exhausted all our usual tricks for fixing weird symptoms with our software.

If anyone has any ideas or has seen this before in their own environment then help would be greatly appreciated!

1
delphicomexcelvba
That's the thing, our software is written in Delphi but Microsoft is giving some typically useful error messages about VBA. All this particular customer is doing is trying to reference our COM library (exposed by our executable) in Excel by going through the relevant dialogs. I'm not sure why Excel thinks our executable is made with, or even related to VBA. It's something I've never seen happen before, nor has any one else in the development team which is why the question is probably a bit vague. – sxthomson
Which version of Excel are they using? 32 or 64 bit? – David Heffernan
That's a really interesting question... I can't get in touch with the customer until tomorrow but I reckon now it's going to be 64 bit Excel. I've just had a read online about how regardless of your architecture you should be using the 32 bit purely for compatibility. She mentioned she recently reinstalled Windows, I reckon she's probably deliberately left out the fact that she's changed Office versions as well. I can test this though in a VM in the meantime if I get a 64bit Office trial. – sxthomson
A lot of people install 64 bit Excel and then are surprised when none of the add ins work. Definitely a good chance this is the problem. If so only solution is for your client to uninstall and re-install 32 bit Excel. – David Heffernan
@ sxthomson - You can ask @David if he could post his comment as an answer. ;) – Sertac Akyuz

1 Answers

3
votes

As a wild guess I speculated that the client may have 64 bit Excel. That would not be compatible with your 32 bit COM server.

Apparently that wild guess proved to be accurate!