MS Excel Visual Basic

[Juan Largo]

Hello,

I'm running MS Office 2003 in Wine 1.1.0. When I launch Excel, the following dialog box appears with a cryptic error message:

Code: Select all

Microsoft Visual Basic
! Error accessing file.  Network connection may have been lost.

I don't know what Visual Basic has in common with a network connection, but when I attempt to utilize Tools > Macros > Visual Basic Editor, all of the Visual Basic menus are greyed out. I also cannot connect to Microsoft Office Online.

I turned off the computer's firewall, but I still cannot connect to Microsoft Office Online. I also tried reinstalling and repairing Microsoft Office, but that didn't work either. Does anyone know how to correct this error?

The same problem existed with Versions 0.9.X.

TIA

[dimesio]

Sounds like this bug: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8795
There's a workaround in the bug report.

[Juan Largo]

From the bug report, the fix seems to involve installing something called DCOM98. What is that and how do I install it?

[dimesio]

Dcom98 contains three dlls from Windows 98: ole32, oleaut32, and rpcrt4. The easiest way to install it is through winetricks:

Code: Select all

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks dcom98

The winetricks script will set the override globally, and if you have any other programs installed in that wineprefix it may affect them. If that happens, you can fix it through winecfg.

[Juan Largo]

Thanks dimesio, this fixed the initial problem and Visual Basic is now working in Excel.

However, now when I launch Excel there is a new message box that says:

Code: Select all

Microsoft Visual Basic
! Invalid data format

When I click OK to kill the box, everything seems to be working except there is still no on-line connection. But that's a small problem I can live with.

Thanks again for your help.