>It does work, I can create an excel object in the development environment all day, it is not working from our launching executable. We have office SR2 installed. Does it matter where or how many layers deep the call is made? Does it matter that the executable is ran from an app server? It doesn't appear to have any problem running from a shortcut on the desktop. We have a exe that launches all of our accounting apps. It must be in that environment, but where?

Then check the setting of SET('OLEOBJECT') as Alexander mentioned. I've been able to instantiate instances of Excel 2000 from with an in-process DLL called from within a PowerBuilder application, so I doubt if the depth has anything to do with it.