Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC

Question

Any help is appreciated:

I'm developing a C#.Net app in VS2010 that interacts with Excel. The app works correctly on my local machine. Uploading to a remote Windows 2003 server however, breaks the app.

Originally, I received the following message

• Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070005

After Googling the problem (which suggested a permissions problem) i tried this:

• Installing Excel 2007
• Going into Component Services on the remote server and following the instructions here: http://blog.crowe.co.nz/archive/2006/03/02/589.aspx

Now I get this message on the same operation:

• Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC

Google searches seem to be suggesting that this is a version match error. However, both the local machine and the remote server use Excel 2007.

Any suggestions would be very welcome. Thanks in advance.

-Daniel

Answer 1

Suggestions:

1. Control Excel from one thread and use the "en_US" culture. There are many properties triggering 0x800A03EC if a non english culture is used. Is per accident your windows 2003 using another system language, if yes then this is probably the issue. No need to reinstall windows! Just specify the culture for the thread in your app.
2. Check the length of the strings set using ranges. There is a limitation to 911 chars. You can set them separately for the cells having bigger strings. It is tedious but I could not find any other way to solve this.