DDEPoke in Access with Excel, refused on 1 instance

Question

I have inherited the maintenance and extension of a long-history in-house Access VBA application automating Excel by DDE. »Automating« in a more general sense of course, you need not teach me that DDE is not automation and that DDE is deprecated ;-) The solution works fine on many client installations with any MSO 32bit 2010 to 2016 combination with Windows 7 to 10. I have one Windows 10 MSO 2016 computer where DDEPoke fails while others with that combi do just fine. The line of code is:

DDEPoke channel, "Z3S5", strBuffer

The answer is:

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Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications
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Run-time error '285':
The other application can't perform the DDE function or retrieval you attempted.
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OK   Help   
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The channel is correctly initiated and the channel object instance filled on the failing instance as well.

I reconstructed that behaviour in a VM and changing the cell address format let me run the DDEPoke line without errors. But trying this on my client's computer had no effect, same error reported.

Both the .mdb and the .xls are opened from a »Trusted location«, trusted in both Excel and Access. I played the »Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)« check true and back in both applications, no change.

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Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications
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Run-time error '285':

The other application can't perform the DDE function or retrieval you attempted.
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OK   Help  
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I searched for the error code and text in the internet, no findings.

I stopped the virus shield for a minute, no change.

Which other security placebos to check? Any other idea?

Answer 1

Repair the Office installation on the computer that gives the error.

Matthias Kläy, Kläy Computing AG

Answer 2

Hi mupan,

According to your description, since in sandbox mode, Access blocks “unsafe” expressions: any expression that uses functions or properties that could be exploited by malicious users to gain access to drives, files, or other resources for which they do not have authorization. You maybe could check sandbox mode, then disable sandbox mode.

For more information, please refer to Functions and properties in Access 2007 blocked by sandbox mode

Thanks for your understanding.

Answer 3

Thank you. I appreciate to learn about Access sandbox. But since DDEIniate is listed under blocked functions on your linked web page as well, I would have tried, if it was not already solved, but don't think the sandbox deactivation would have helped this time.

Answer 4

When I tried to ask my IT department to repair or re-install the Office I learned the whole machine has been set up by the colleagues already and that solved this issue among others, so this is the confirmation I was wrong with thinking about security, you were right to think of just installation failures. The user forgot to inform me.