M365 VBA Compatibility Issues with TN3270 Emulator

Bill Spang 0 Reputation points
2023-01-26T14:05:26.6866667+00:00

I am experiencing M365 VBA Compatibility Issues with TN3270 Emulator. I cannot find any documentation, so your experience on the subject is much appreciated.
I have an enterprise client running legacy TN3270 Emulator. I developed an Employee Survey in EXCEL and VBA that randomly appears to survey what the Employee is doing at that time to measure productivity and resource allocation. Between random surveys, there is an Excel Form that remains open top left of screen that I call a Session Manager that lets the Employee close the Application or perform some other operation. The Timer Procedure is a Do While Loop with DoEvents that has an Attribute (true false) that is read to know when to activate the survey.
The Client Machines, all Lenova Laptops running Windows 10 Pro with M365 installed, have the heavy TN3270 Emulator installed to run mainframe programs. I have some experience with Emulators and interacting with them from Excel and Access using VBA, but that is from my Office 2010 days.
The Survey app is started first thing in the morning and is closed at the end of the workday. It runs just fine while the employee goes about their work with other Applications, whether MS Office Apps or 3rd Party Services. To help mitigate the issue, I have dumbed the Application down so that it is compatible with Office 2007.
The problem is that the App chokes and wants to steal focus when the Emulator is opened. The Employee cannot do anything. If they try to compose an email, open word, anything, the Survey App keeps taking focus.
It is my theory that the Emulator is loading legacy Office Components (pre-2013) that are in conflict with M365 or even Office 2013 and later and is the cause for this issue. This issue is related to ambiguity in the installed components. I have experienced similar issues with CITRIX VDI's, but one we removed the office components there, everything was fine.
My client will not provide me a sandbox environment to test my theory and I am at the mercy of their IT department that seems a bit lethargic to explore the issue in fear that it may disrupt business operations.
I would like to disable the Office Components from loading, and I am not sure of the proper instruction that I need to give to the Project Manager, to do so.
Any insight would be deeply appreciated!

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