Question : Problem launching Excel from server

Hi kind people - I wonder if you can help with the following...

I have written a simple DLL in VB6. The DLL opens Excel97, puts some values on a worksheet, runs the chart wizard and then saves the chart generated as a gif file. This gif file is then going to be displayed within a web page.

I am instantiating the DLL from some server side script in an ASP page, and this all works fine on my development server.

Unfortunately when moving the application to a test server, this functionality no longer works. When the users navigate to the web page with this ASP code on, they get the error message:

Method '~' of Object '~' Failed (800a03ec).

The DLL is called directly from the ASP page (i.e. not using MTS) and the asp apge runs under IIS.

I know that Excel is installed and working on the test server, and that my DLL is correctly installed / registered ( I can run a VB compiled EXE which calls the same DLL with no problems).

I have looked through MSDN and Technet with no luck so far. I thought that it could be permissions related - I have tried the following:

Created a user with access rights to log on locally to the server. Logged on as that user and checked could access Excel / the DLL. In IIS Admin, for the web page I am using, set the properties, then file security to allow anonymous access and to use the special user i created.

What is particularly annoying is that it worked fine in development, and I can't find any differences between the development server and the test server!!!

Anyone who can solve this will be worth their weight in gold!

thanks in advance for your help...

Answer : Problem launching Excel from server

It looks to me like you are missing a dll on the test server, or something that your DLL is calling is missing on the DLL server.  

In your VB code with in that Function that instatiates the DLL add some error handling that will throw the error back to the ASP page so we can see what that is.

Public Function sample()

On Error Goto Err_Handler

'vb code


Err_Handler:

  sample = Err.Description & Err.Source

End Function