I ran into an odd error today running MS Excel 2003 sp2. Whenever I tried to instantiate the COM object an error was raised:

The cause of this exception was that: AutomationException: 0x80080005 - Server execution failed. Note that Windows 95 does not support automatic launch of a server, it must be running already. was raised

I searched this Blog (bloggger.com search sucks) and searching Google did me no good. Searching the MSDN Knowledge Base didn’t help either. I thought I had encountered this error once before; but I hadn’t personally. It turns out though that one of my clients had and because of that I had done some prior research. Fortunately, I had saved the email which pointed to a thread on a microsoft support forum that gave me a hint.

It turned out I needed to do something I had never done before on a windows machine. I had to manage a DCOM security setting. I wasn’t sure how to do it but it turned out to be pretty easy and, I guess fairly intuitive since I didn’t have to search Google for help on it.

Using the “start menu” I went to START | PROGRAMS | ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS | COMPONENT SERVICES. Once the window popped up I expanded Component Services | Computers | My Computer | DCOM Config. Within that node of the tree I found “Microsoft Excel Application”. Right clicking on that I found a “properties” option. On that dialog was a “security” tab. Under the “Launch and Activation Permissions” I selected “Customize” and then clicked the “Edit” button. I choose to “Add” a new user and another dialog appeared. Here I typed in my IUSER account information and clicked “OK” and then choose the “Local Launch” and “Local Activation” permissions. I wasn’t sure which one I needed but at this point CF and Excel were working together so I was happy.

When adding the new account permission the process kind of broke down though because I didn’t know the name of my IUSR account of the the top of my head and there was no way to have the dialog prompt me with a list of valid users. I ended up having to open up the administrative interface for Users and Groups to get that string.

Comments

MLR

thanx for the info :D