A problem popped up recently where an Excel Macro file wasn’t working – there was a button to run the macro, but the button wouldn’t even click. This is despite all the security settings being their lowest – e.g. Enable all macros (not recommended; potentially dangerous code can run).

A friend pointed me in the right direction for this one, and the cuprit was Windows Update KB2553154 which I don’t think has actually been pulled yet (although InfoWorld reports others have). The patch is designed to fix a vulnerability.

There’s a great post on StackOverflow about this, along with a fix from user John W  that I can confirm works:

From other forums, I have learned that it is due to the MS Update and that a good fix is to simply delete the file MSForms.exd from any Temp subfolder in the user’s profile. For instance:

C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Excel8.0\MSForms.exd

C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\VBE\MSForms.exd

C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Word8.0\MSForms.exd

Of course the application (Excel, Word…) must be closed in order to delete this file.

I actually just deleted everything in the Temp folder. The user didn’t need to log off or anything, just opened up the Excel Macro template and it instantly worked.

You could use group policy preferences to delete these .exd files if you don’t want to manually remove it, but hopefully you don’t have too many people in your company affected by this. Otherwise, it might be a good idea to hold off on 2553154 as MS may release a hotfix or re-patch the patch.

Updated: Affects Word also.