Bug Alert: vbWatchdog

UPDATE [2021-06-02]: Ben Clothier described the same bug but with different symptoms on the AccessExperts blog.  Users may see a dialog box that says, "Project Locked - Project is unviewable"; or a different error message, "There was a problem accessing a property or method of the OLE object."; or no error message at all (simply a hard crash).

I recently updated to the latest 64-bit version of Microsoft 365.  Shortly thereafter I received the following error message when I tried to execute any VBA code:

For all you robots and web crawlers out there, the text of the error message is:

Microsoft Visual Basic

Run-time error '-2147200481 (8004521f)':

E_VBWATCHDOG_UNSUPPORTED_VBAVERSION (0x8004521F)

Sorry, vbWatchdog does not support this version of VBA (or VB6). Please inform the developer of this software to get in touch with EverythingAccess.com to obtain an update.

FailCode: 1090/X64/7/0/0/61BD0000/7.1.11.9

The Fix

Luckily, Wayne Phillips is all over it and already has a fix in place.  Version 3.92 of vbWatchdog fixes this error (vbWatchdog version history):

Update: v3.9.2, 26-May-2021

(64-bit affected only) Fixed: crash on ErrEx initialization in VBA 7.1.1109 x64

As the note indicates, this error only affects 64-bit installations of VBA (specifically version 7.1.1109 [and later?]).  To check your VBA version, switch to the VBA editor then click Help > About Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications...

Access developers using vbWatchdog versions prior to 3.92, keep in mind that this error will occur for any of your users with the above version of 64-bit VBA.  In other words, while you may not see this error in your development environment, you should make sure to update vbWatchdog in all of your applications because it may soon affect your clients/users.

Wait a minute. What the heck is vbWatchdog?

If you are NOT a Microsoft Access developer and you arrived at this website via your friendly neighborhood search engine, you probably don't know or care what vbWatchdog is.  

First of all, rest assured that it is not malware or a virus.  It's an add-in that developers use to improve their software's error handling.  

As the error message itself states, you will need to "inform the developer" who wrote your software that it needs an update.  You can also point them to this page, if you want.  They'll be able to figure the rest out from here.

Image by a_roesler from Pixabay