Yes, Michael
This all about early binding and Createobjectex
But this is other problem, not first one
We took few PC with different soft , installed on it ( but excel was always there) and at 50% createobjectex for early binding took wrong library and demonstrated later errors , when working with excel , because has shown parts of the wrong excel properties/methods
It is not difficalt to use real progid instead of blank string, but (!!!) it also produce error later with amembers or just before it
Vladimir