Eight-year-old bug in Microsoft's 64-bit VBA prompts complaints of neglect

guest · Aug 19, 2021

Eight-year-old bug in Microsoft's 64-bit VBA prompts complaints of neglect
'It blocks a migration to Office 64 here, because we cannot get our code out'
August 19, 2021
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/64_bit_microsoft_vba_bug/

A compiler bug in 64-bit Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) on Windows has existed unfixed for years, a user complained, and is blocking migration to 64-bit Office.

The problem – reported by a StackOverflow user – is in code that runs correctly in 32-bit VBA but not in the 64-bit version.
Rather, it appears that if a class is declared including a Class_Terminate() method (VBA lingo for a destructor, called when the class is destroyed), then in some circumstances a function that should return false will instead return true.

We tried it and can confirm that while the code works as expected in 32-bit VBA, in 64-bit it does not.
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Bugs are a fact of life in software, so what is special about this one?
One is that a function that returns true when they should return false could have potentially calamitous consequences. If lucky, the application crashes; if unlucky, it delivers wrong results that are not immediately noticed.

Second, the bug was reported to Microsoft... years ago. This user reported it in 2018.
The bug has likely existed for years, possibly since the introduction of 64-bit VBA in Office 2010.
Click to expand...

The partial good news is that the StackOverflow community found a workaround. "If True = ReturnFalse(New SomeClass) Then" fixes it, another user noted.
The response? "Problem is, should I invest in a development platform that has no defined process for users to report bugs, get bugs fixed or even get a list of open bugs to work around?" said the original user. A question, perhaps, that is easily answered.
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