Category Archives: MS Excel

So What’s Your Access Version And Build No?

Since Click-to-run (CTR or C2R) came out, one of the fundamental questions anyone trying to help out other users with their problems asks is:

What Version and Build are you running?

The problem is this question seems so mundane, yet it can be very confusing!

I’ve previously covered the subject

MS Access - Determine Build Number

With the never ending updates for Office 365/2016 it has become necessary to be able to determine what build number you, your users, are running to be able to determine if you have all the latest updates installed, and/or determine if you have a known bugged update installed… so you can determine if you need to update/revert your installation. As per most things, it isn’t really hard to locate this information once you’ve done so once.

That said, I never covered the issue of 2 distinct values appearing at time and thought it important to clarify the difference and which is the correct one to refer to.

Why Are The Version And Build So Important?

It helps us determine if there are known bugs with that specific release. Each update, so each build, bring along new bugs and by telling us the Version and Build we can check known issues to either determine, or eliminate the potential of a bug causing the issue.

It also helps us try and reproduce such bugs and report them to Microsoft (it’s typically one of the first questions they ask of us! 🙂 ).

It’s similar to say buying tires, you have to tell the shop what make/model of car you have to purchase the right ones. Same for Office/Access, the make and model equate to the Version and Build and this tell us what flavor of Access you are driving! This way we can better gear our help towards the specifics of your make/model.

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How To Force Update Channel Changes To Take Effect

What a mess Microsoft’s Update Channel have made the Office Ecosystem!

I mean, really!

I avoid being on the cutting edge for a reason, because Microsoft’s updates are simply garbage. They typically cause more problems than they solve and as such I use the Monthly Enterprise Channel, or even slower.

That all being said, because of some work for a client, I needed to switch to the Monthly channel to get some of the recent new features. The problem being I can’t get office to update!

I made the switch in the admin account to the Current Channel hours ago

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Is It Time To Panic, Possibly!

I’ve seen a couple posts in the past few months, then Frank Ruperto made some blog comments on the subject and now, Mike Wolfe has posted an article regarding Microsoft stopping Windows and Windows Server support of older versions of Office.

I’m not going to copy Mike’s work, nor copy Microsoft’s Support Matrix, but I highly urge you to carefully review the following sources of information and start making plans as to how you want to move forward.

Windows and Office configuration support matrix

Windows Server end of support and Microsoft 365 Apps - Deploy Office

Provides admins using Microsoft 365 Apps with information about which versions of Windows Server are supported.

UPDATE: Office Apps WILL Run on Windows Server After October 2025

Earlier this year, Microsoft quietly reversed its decision to end support for running Office apps on Windows Server at the end of 2025.

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Access/Office Won’t Update Beyond Version 2002

I’ve been smacking my head against my PC (a VM that is) because I couldn’t get it to update beyond Version 2002 (build 12257.22286) no matter what I tried:

Manually updating via one of the Office Apps
Forcing the update via command line
Tried changing the update channel via the command line
Tried changing the update channel via the MS365 Admin Center
…

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VBA – Get SSL Certificate’s Expiry

I was helping a user in a forum and thought I’d publish the solution here in case it could help others as it currently is behind the forum’s PayWall.

The user wanted to know how we could,using VBA, retrieve a site’s SSL Certificate’s Expiry Date/Time.

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VBA – WMI – Gather Information & Configure Printers Cont’d

So, I’ve recently been on a WMI Printer kick! 🙂

VBA - WMI - Deleting A Printer

Just a short post today to demonstrate how easy it is to delete a printer from a PC executing some simple WMI code via VBA. If you follow my blog at all, by now you are fully aware that WMI can easily retrieve information regarding pretty much any aspect of your PC: Hardware, Software, Events,…

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VBA - WMI - Configure A Printer

Earlier in the week, I demonstrated that WMI can be use for more than just retrieve information about a PC. What about configuring different aspects of your PC! That’s right, WMI can do that too.

So let’s do one more article and share a little more of some of what can be done, things like:

Get Information About The Printer And Drivers
Get The PC’s Default Printer
Set A Printer As The Default Printer
Rename A Printer

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VBA – WMI – Change the ‘Use Printer Offline’ Property

Earlier in the week, I demonstrated that WMI can be use for more than just retrieve information about a PC.

VBA - WMI - Deleting A Printer

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What about configuring different aspects of your PC! That’s right, WMI can do that too.

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VBA – Add Trailing Character or String

I think most of us have a function similar to Allen Browne’s

Function TrailingSlash(varIn As Variant) As String
    If Len(varIn) > 0 Then
        If Right(varIn, 1) = "\" Then
            TrailingSlash = varIn
        Else
            TrailingSlash = varIn & "\"
        End If
    End If
End Function

to add a trailing slash as required to a string.

Today, I propose 2 extensions on that original function:

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VBA – Message Box That Supports Unicode Characters

Working on a recent project I needed to be able to use unicode characters in a Message Box. Sadly, the built-in MsgBox does not support such characters. Who knew?!

So I set off and quickly came across a Stack Overflow thread in which it was mentioned to use the MessageBoxW API. I then search it up and found:

MessageBoxW function (winuser.h) - Win32 apps

Displays a modal dialog box that contains a system icon, a set of buttons, and a brief application-specific message, such as status or error information. The message box returns an integer value that indicates which button the user clicked. (MessageBoxW)

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VBA – WMI – Deleting A Printer

Just a short post today to demonstrate how easy it is to delete a printer from a PC executing some simple WMI code via VBA.

If you follow my blog at all, by now you are fully aware that WMI can easily retrieve information regarding pretty much any aspect of your PC: Hardware, Software, Events, …, but it can do so much more. Did you know it can also make changes to your PC! It can install, configure and even delete pretty much anything as well. So let’s explore a first simple example, the printer.

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