XL2002: Excel May Stop Responding If You Call Calculate from an Asynchronous COM Event

Excel may stop repainting and stop responding to user events. This may occur when you use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Microsoft Excel 2002. If you sink events for a COM component that raises those events asynchronously (from another thread or timer) and then you call Calculate on the Application or Worksheet object from the event, you may receive the following error message:


The crash information reports one of the following crash addresses:

This problem typically occurs when Excel runs in the background, and a foreground window moves across the Excel window while Excel is in the process of calculation for a complex worksheet.

Excel stops responding when the calculation peeks messages from the message queue and then allows another asynchronous event to fire. This occurs even though Excel has not completed the previous COM event and calculation. The reentrant call may result in state corruption that may cause Excel to stop responding during the recalculation.

Service Pack Information

This problem is corrected in Office XP Service Pack 3.To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office XP. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix Information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a "Hotfix download available" section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, submit a request to Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note The "Hotfix download available" form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language.After the hotfix is installed, the English version of this fix will have the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel. The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Office XP Service Pack 3.