MS Word VBA in document saved in word 2003 causes error in 2010 64 bit

Question

I have a document that has VBA macros in it and when I try to open it in word 2010 64bit it complains that the code should be updated for use on 64 bit systems. I added conditional compilation clauses #If Not 64Bit but this did not help. Is there anything else that might be done?

Answer 1

Are you using any ActiveX controls? For example, if your Word application displays a custom UserForm then it is likely that the controls on it (including some of the built-in ones) won't work properly.

From here :

ActiveX Control and COM Add-in Compatibility

Existing 32-bit ActiveX controls, both third-party and Microsoft-supplied, are not compatible with the 64-bit version of Office 2010. For ActiveX controls and COM objects, there are three possible solutions:

• If you have the source code, you can generate a 64-bit version yourself,

• You can contact the vendor for an updated version,

• You can search for an alternative solution.

Native 64-bit processes in Office 2010 cannot load 32-bit binaries. This includes the common controls of MSComCtl (TabStrip, Toolbar, StatusBar, ProgressBar, TreeView, ListViews, ImageList, Slider, ImageComboBox) and the controls of MSComCt2 (Animation, UpDown, MonthView, DateTimePicker, FlatScrollBar).These controls were installed by previous versions of Microsoft Office and are installed by 32-bit Office 2010. An alternative must be found for existing Microsoft Office VBA solutions that utilize these controls when the code is migrated to 64-bit Office 2010. 64-bit Office 2010 does not provide 64-bit versions of the Common Controls.

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Declare statments are also affected when using the 64-bit version of Office:

In previous versions of VBA, there was no specific pointer data type so the Long data type was used. And because the Long data type is always 32-bits, this breaks when used on a system with 64-bit memory because the upper 32-bits may be truncated or may overwrite other memory addresses. Either of these situations can result in unpredictable behavior or system crashes.

Example of old Declare statement:

Declare Function RegOpenKeyA Lib "advapi32.dll" (ByVal Key As Long, ByVal SubKey As String, NewKey As Long) As Long

To resolve this, VBA now contains a true pointer data type: LongPtr.

New version:

Declare PtrSafe Function RegOpenKeyA Lib "advapi32.dll" (ByVal Key As LongPtr, ByVal SubKey As String, NewKey As LongPtr) As Long

This data type and the new PtrSafe attribute enable you to use this Declare statement on either 32-bit or 64-bit systems. The PtrSafe attribute indicates to the VBA compiler that the Declare statement is targeted for the 64-bit version of Office 2010. Without this attribute, using the Declare statement in a 64-bit system will result in a compile-time error. Note that the PtrSafe attribute is optional on the 32-bit version of Office 2010. This enables existing Declare statements to work as they always have.

Quotes taken from here again