Newsletter Archives

• Major backstyle, ZOrder problems with controls in latest Office 2016 Click-to-Run, Excel 2016, likely Word 2016

  Posted on October 24, 2016 at 10:12 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Another chapter in the ongoing saga of “What will Microsoft do when one of its patches screws up?”

  This time, it looks like Office Click-to-Run 7369.2038 – that’s the latest version you’re likely to have if you are using Office 365 – is causing havoc with backstyles in certain custom user forms. If you have a custom form that set a Backstyle (or, it appears, a ZOrder), this latest version of Office CtR will clobber your setting. It looks like Excel 2016 and Word 2016 may have the same problem.

  For most folks running Office it isn’t a big deal. But if you have a VBA app that fiddles with its labels, checkboxes, option buttons, or other controls, you may be seeing weird artifacts — or may not see anything at all.

  As best I can tell, the problem started on Oct. 4 with the release of CtR 7369.2034. The bug continued in 7369.2038, released Oct. 11. [Ed note: earlier erroneous version numbers have replaced with the correct ones.] The only apparent fix is to revert to an earlier version of Office CtR.

  Microsoft, much to its credit, has acknowledged the problem in a TechNet post, but there hasn’t been any news of a real fix. The best on offer is to roll back to a previous version of Office CtR, Word or Excel. In this case, looking at the official CtR release docs, that means pulling back to 7341.2035.

  Once you’ve reverted to an earlier version of Office, you automatically turn off Office Click-to-Run Automatic Updating. It’s up to you to turn it back on again.

  Before I hear from the “it’s trivial” crowd, consider this post from L Phillips:

  Our application (which runs in Excel) is used around the world by food companies and universities to formulate new foods, run food manufacturing processes, and develop nutrition facts labels. This means several thousand organizations must use Excel because of my application. Releasing updates that make Excel unusable is bad for everyone? It may seem like an inconvenience to you but when a key user interface is no longer functional because a label that was added as border in the back is now a solids grey box in the front is a big deal to us.

  Windows Patches/Security 7341.2035, 7369.2038, 7369.3024, controls, Excel 2016, Office Click-to-Run, Word 2016