SharePoint: Excel 2003 Import and Outlook problems (Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed)

 

Updated… New version of Office, same old problem!  If you get the IOWSPostData error the same fix for Office 2007 will also work for Office 2010.

Updated again 2/24/13… This time for SharePoint 2013 and Office 2010.

One of my VPC images for SharePoint is acting up. It has MOSS 2007 and Office 2003. The problems are: Import from Excel fails and Connect To Outlook fails. Another VPC created from the same original setup is fine. The only thing really different with this VPC is that it has SharePoint Designer installed.

Errors from Excel: "object doesn't support this property or method"
Errors from Outlook (not consistent) : "Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed"

What appears to have happened is that SharePoint Designer is an Office 2007 product, it installs a bunch of Office 12 files and must be updating default paths or registry entries to point to Office 12 instead of Office 11. For the Excel issue I think it is loading the Office 12 DLL and calling from an Office 11 Excel macro file. I have not found a workaround yet for the Outlook problem. It works sometime and not others. My research so far (thanks to all of the bloggers out there!) has found at least a fix for the Excel Import problem. This requires an edit to the macro used by SharePoint to perform the import.

• Open the macro file in Excel (Excel 2003 is ok, or at least worked for me)
    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 2007\Office12\1033\EXPTOOWS.XLA
  For Office 2010 find the file here:
    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033\EXPTOOWS.XLA
  or
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033\EXPTOOWS.XLA
  Or just do a search of C: for EXPTOOWS.XLA
  
  You find that this is a hidden file, so you many need to change Windows Explorer to “Show hidden files”
  You may need administrator rights to save the file:
    - Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office
    - Hold down the Shift key and right-click Microsoft Excel
    - Click Run as Administrator
    - In Excel, click File, Open and navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033
      and open the EXPTOOWS.XLA file.
   
• Press Alt-F11 to display the Excel macro editor and the find the EXPTOOWS.XLA file
   
• Find the line containing "lVer = Application.SharePointVersion(URL)" and change it "lVer = 2".
  (That's LVer, not iVer or 1Ver)
  
  Update: To play it safe, just add the lVer =2 at the end of the Initialize subroutine:
   
   
• Save the file. Click “Save changed and discard signature” to overwrite the old file.

More info here: http://msmvps.com/blogs/obts/archive/2006/12/05/384536.aspx

The only problem with this fix is that when you save the change you lose the digital signature from Microsoft on the macro file.

 

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