"Compile error in hidden module" message in Excel
January 15, 2013
Recently, several people have reported that the RegEx Find/Replace add-in for Excel has stopped working, displaying the following error message:
The error appears to be a side effect of a recent update released by Microsoft. I don't know the details of exactly why this broke the add-in, and I'm not sure if it's caused by a Windows update or a Microsoft Office update. However, after scouring the Internet for a while, I came across a solution. Here are the steps to restore the add-in's functionality:
The error appears to be a side effect of a recent update released by Microsoft. I don't know the details of exactly why this broke the add-in, and I'm not sure if it's caused by a Windows update or a Microsoft Office update. However, after scouring the Internet for a while, I came across a solution. Here are the steps to restore the add-in's functionality:
- Close Excel
- Open a command prompt with admin privileges
- Run the following two commands:
- For 32-bit Windows:
regsvr32 -u c:\windows\system32\mscomctl.ocx regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\mscomctl.ocx
- For 64-bit Windows:
regsvr32 -u c:\windows\syswow64\mscomctl.ocx regsvr32 c:\windows\syswow64\mscomctl.ocx
- For 32-bit Windows:
- Open Excel
- Close Excel
- Open Windows Explorer
- In the Windows Explorer address bar, type %appdata%
and press Enter - In the resulting list of subfolders, find and open the Microsoft folder
- In the Microsoft folder, find and open the Forms subfolder
- In the Forms folder, rename or delete the following two files (if they are present):
- comctllib.exd
- mscomctllib.exd
- Open Excel (it will automatically recreate the aforementioned files as it needs them)
Posted by Justin Rodes. Posted In : Excel add-ins