Windows Update 2019-08 Cumulative Update has broken VBA code use case

Anonymous
2019-08-14T10:33:56+00:00

An issue with VBA code has started to be seen by some of my users and also by me this morning. I have tracked it down to have been caused by the latest 2019-08 Cumulative Update (e.g. KB4511553) and it is affecting all combinations of Windows and Office that I have seen so far- from Windows Server 2008 to Windows 10 & Office 2003(!) to Office 2016. 

The test code below demonstrates the problem. The method "Test" executes with no errors before the 2019-08 cumulative update is installed (or after it is uninstalled). However, after the update, the scenario of passing an empty ParamArray parameter to another method as a Variant parameter causes an error to be thrown on the declaration line of the second method. (Error 5: Invalid procedure call or argument).

Sub Test()

    Test1 "A", "B"   'Works OK with and without Windows Update

    Test1            'Fails after Windows Update

End Sub

Sub Test1(ParamArray P() As Variant)

    Test2 P

End Sub

Sub Test2(ByVal P As Variant)    'Error occurs on this line

End Sub

This is causing errors in my Microsoft Access application, but I have also tried this code in Word 2016 and the same issue occurs there too.

Can somebody validate this, please? I'm not really sure what the correct way of reporting this problem is.

Thanks

Chris

Microsoft 365 and Office | Access | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T23:41:43+00:00

    Well, since I've got the opportunity to talk to someone inside the moat, here are a couple more ideas to pass up the foodchain there:

    For example, in the Feedback system (Feedback Hub and UserVoice sites) could you suggest making the acknowledgement more descriptive.  "We've got it" doesn't convey anything useful.

    UserVoice sites: implement some design standards. Those sites are totally wild west. For example, start by getting rid of the limit on the number of votes you can make.

    Do userVoice feedback appear in the Feedback hub? They should. I've never tested.

    OneNote Windows 10 / UWP: the single worst design decision MS has made since the ribbon and Clippy. How on earth could anyone sign off on forcibly replacing OneNote 2016/desktop with the UWP version. That move alone was incredibly rude.  And, UWP is STILL missing so much key functionality how could MS claim it is a (dis)"improvement". Taking functionality away, with the promise to restore it "someday" is unacceptable.  Forcing people to ONLY store notes in OneDrive is unacceptable for privacy reasons!

    Create a section in the Feedback Hub tracking / reporting feedbacks that have actually been implemented. Too many people still feel that Feedback is a black hole, suggestions go in, but nothing comes out.

    Categorizing feedbacks is too difficult. I always have a hard time figuring out which categories to use. I don't like it, but I don't know specifically how to make it better...

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T23:15:15+00:00

    You're welcome.  I apologize for the historical behavior of "the castle" not communicating.  We're trying to change that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T22:17:05+00:00

    Thanks for the rare update from inside the castle.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T19:56:06+00:00

    I am a Sr. Escalation Engineer for Microsoft, and we are already working multiple support cases that have been opened for this issue.  The update that was released yesterday contained a change in the oleaut32.dll that mitigates a specific security exploit. Unfortunately, this mitigation unexpectedly caused all these VBA and VB6 apps that were passing an empty ParamArray to start getting E_INVALIDARG in return from an internal function call.  This bubbled up to the errors you are seeing.

    We are taking this very seriously and discussing the possibilities for a safe and quick way to resolve this.  Since it was caused by a security update, there may be some obstacles to simply reverting the changes we made.

    Nevertheless, our full attention is on this issue now, and please rest assured that we will provide an update when we can safely do so.

    In the meantime, if you are at liberty to modify your code, passing a parameter to the ParamArray, even if you don't need it, should avoid the problem.

    Scot

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-08-14T15:45:53+00:00

    Chris:

    Don't reply to the elizabeth lee contacts, they are machine generated spam

    What version and build number do you have after the updates are applied?

    What version Office do I have / What Version  Windows do I have

    Textify – A tool to capture “uncopiable” text from dialog boxes

    https://rammichael.com/textify

    Have you ever wanted to copy some text from a dialog box which doesn’t provide such functionality?

    Textify was created to solve this problem: you can point your mouse over the text, click on the mouse shortcut (Shift + Middle click by default), and get a selectable view of the text.

    <Rohn007: I’ve been using this tool for a while now. It is great for copying “uncopiable” text in dialog boxes, like version and build numbers.

    2018 11 26- 5 ways to find the exact version of Microsoft Office that you are using

    https://www.digitalcitizen.life/find-exact-version-microsoft-office

    This is a good article that covers Office 2003 to 2019.

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