Error Messages/43567

Example error messages

The notorious general Excel exception 0x800A03EC occurred when evaluating obj->ThisWorkbook.

Cause

Anyone who attempts to program Excel, when in VBA or from an application using COM, is likely to encounter the 0x800A03EC exception often. It is a frustrating error because Excel provides no specific information on what the problem is. It is essentially Excel's way of saying "there is an error, and I'm not going to tell you what it is!"

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of diverse situations that cause this error to occur. One way you can usually use to figure it out is to do a google search for 0x800A03EC along with the method or property name that you were calling. For example, if the exception occurred when you where asking for the ThisWorkbook property, then search for

0x800A03EC ThisWorkbook

There are tens of thousands of postings on numerous forums where people ask about the 0x800A03EC exception -- you need to find one where they are asking about this exception on the same method or property that you are calling.

Known cases

If you encounter it on a particular method, and are able to figure out the reason, please add it to this section for the benefit of others later.

ThisWorkbook

Trying to call Application->ThisWorkbook always fails with this error. This property can only be used from VBA code running directly in Excel. It returns the workbook that the currently running Excel macro resides in.

You'll need to do something like:

Application->Workbooks(1)

but you'll need some way to figure out which workbook you want, since several might be open. To create a new empty workbook:

Application->Workbooks->Add(1)

Remedy

Remedies for this error vary, and depend on the nature of the error. Use the guidelines above or contact Lumina tech support for assistance.