Compatibility or security issues Excel 2019

[bobsan42]

Hello everyone.
I stumbled upon an issue which i can't seem to solve immediately.
I am currently working on a project - automating excel as a relatively simple database.
There is basically a front-end (with the intention to make it an excel add-in) and a simple xlsx as a backend. It has its own ribbon, forms, modules, sheets etc.
I am developing it on a 64 bit Excel with O365 home subscription.
The solution runs w/o any hick-ups on a 64-bit 2013 version. All systems are Windows 10 64 bit. There are conditional declarations included to check for 32 and 64 bit. There are some API calls, but most of it is pure VBA.
The connections to the back-end are not automatically triggered upon file opening, but upon the push of a button. The project is not digitally signed and the file is opened from a trusted location.

However trying to run it on a 2019 business edition turned into a complete disaster. Every call to a macro ended up with a VBA System error &H8000FFF (-2147418113).
No macros seem to be allowed to run. Eventually I got an Out of memorry message.
I checked all trust center settings and found no obvious problems.
I started transfering all the elements of the file to a new XLSM file, one-at-a-time. Up to a point the new file the attempts to run the new file in 2019 were succsessful.
At on point I started getting the same problem again. After this point, even removing elements from the file, the issue persisted.

Any ideas? Incompatible elements or libraries? Or some system security settings?

 

[bobsan42]

Additional information:
I put a small MsgBox in Workbook_Open event.
This seems to work.
But Compiling in VBE ends up with the same error message and cannot complete.
Removed the Ribbon XML and callbacks - same thing.

Eventually removed all userforms and the problem went away, but the application is unusable ?!

Any ideas?

 

[bobsan42]

More development:
I exported all UserForms modules as sets of FRM and FRX files.
Started importing them back one at a time in VBE.
On three ocasions the import was not successfull and triggered the same errors. It also produced three log files with a single line in each:

Line 2: Property OleObjectBlob in frmAddClient could not be set.

I looked into the corresponding FRM file and this is what's in it:

Begin {C62A69F0-16DC-11CE-9E98-00AA00574A4F} xxxxxxxx 
 ...
   OleObjectBlob   =   "xxxxxxxx.frx":0000

The only significat difference between these 3 forms and the rest of them is the amount of controls in them and the size of the exported FRX files (145 KB, 200 KB and 396 KB) - the largest of the others is 20 KB.

Now what follows is to investigate all the Form controls, which will probably be a tedious task, since the 2019 excel is on a remote computer.

If anyone knows anything, I'm all ears .
If not - I will post my findings for the future generations to read.

 

[bobsan42]

Maybe the cuplrit were some small image controls ... removed them and am now waiting for results.

 

[bobsan42]

Well, it really turned out the image controls I have used are not accepted by office 2019.
It just showed its dislike in a very startling way.
I learned new ways of using, embedding and reusing images (and more) on userforms