HRESULT 0x80010001 error when DiffEngineX compares workbook with large pivot table

Question

DiffEngineX has successfully compared Excel workbooks since the late 1990s.

In the last few weeks, while comparing Excel spreadsheets an exception was thrown. In the past 10 years this error was never seen.

It was a HRESULT 0x80010001 RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED error.

The two occasions that provoked this were.

1. DiffEngineX compared two workbooks with a large pivot table that made use of the increased pivot table limits in Excel 2007 over Excel 2003. The error was thrown just after a call to load the workbook. Windows 7 and Excel 2010.
2. DiffEngineX was comparing two workbooks containing VBA macros and event handlers. The error only occurred when DiffEngineX had to touch every single cell in the two spreadsheet files being compared. Also the error only occurred if run on a particularly slow computer. On even a middle of the road computer 5 years old, the error did not occur. (The error was reproduced on Windows XP and Windows 7 with both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007).

The software product DiffEngineX can be downloaded from

http://compare-excel-workbooks.org/

Answer 1

The error has now been fixed in version 2.27.

But it would be nice if someone would give their opinion on the cause.

Our guess is that Excel is called to do some work. The work completed and the call to the Excel object model returns. But there is some side-effect in Excel which causes additional work, after the call returns.

On a slow computer or with a large pivot table or maybe with VBA event handlers getting called, the side-effect work occupies Excel. Then a subsequent call to Excel is made. Excel is busy and so throws an exception.

For the fixed version go to:

http://www.florencesoft.com/excel-differences-download.html