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Q: Microsoft Office Visual Basic issue after upgrade to MacBook Pro via Migration Assistant

I've just moved all my files from my old iMac to my new (well new to me - it's a second-hand 2010 2.4 GHz 13 inch model) MacBook Pro using Migration Assistant. Everything worked flawlessly apart from one thing - whenever I try and use a macro now in MS Office 2011 I get the following message:


*****

Can't load Visual Basic for Applications


Make sure Visual Basic for Applications is installed on your computer. if Visual

Basic for Applications is installed, make sure the path to the installation

folder does not contain any characters outside of the system code page (such as

Cyrillic characters on an English system) and contains fewer than 255

characters.

*****


Visual basic worked perfectly before on my old iMac, so I have no idea what has happened here to throw it out. VBA is installed, and the path is:

"MBP/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office/Visual Basic for Applications.framework/Visual Basic for Applications"

so no strange characters and well under 255 characters too.


From the error message it seems all I have to do is tell Word where to look to find the program and it will be happy, but in typical Microsoft fashion the error tells me what's wrong but not where to go to fix it or how. There's nothing obvious in Word under Preferences>File locations, and I've tried reinstalling just Visual Basic for Applications from the Office 2011 DVD but that didn't change anything either - same error message and the files are in the same place on my hard drive. I'm loathe to entirely reinstall office to fix what appears to be a relatively simple issue as I'll have to set it up from scratch again. Does anyone know where/what I have to do to point Word in the right direction?

 

Both the iMac and the MacBook are on Mountain Lion, and the transfer worked perfectly otherwise. I can't find anyone else having had this issue after an upgrade using Migration Assistant, so any help gratefully recieved!

 

G.

Posted on Apr 8, 2013 8:12 AM

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Q: Microsoft Office Visual Basic issue after upgrade to MacBook Pro via Migration Assistant

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  • by Eustace Mendis,

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Apr 8, 2013 8:50 AM in response to breadbin
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Apr 8, 2013 8:50 AM in response to breadbin

    I had similar problems recently with Office 2011.

     

    I got in touch with MS, and after some serious grief from them, including a request for $90 to pay for their advice, a technician did solve the problem. It was a long process of trashing preferences etc. which I had no interest in remembering.

     

    Here's the link to MS support:

    https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?&c1=505&gprid=15627&&st=1&wfxredi rect=1&sd=gn

  • by Rob MacIntyre,Helpful

    Rob MacIntyre Rob MacIntyre Apr 26, 2013 1:35 PM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (40 points)
    Apr 26, 2013 1:35 PM in response to breadbin

    Just struggled through this one for a while.  I updated Office, then replaced prefs in both ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data and ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft.  No effect.

     

    In the end, here's what worked:

    • Locate com.microsoft.Word.plist in ~/Library/Preferences
    • Find an earlier version of this file in Time Machine (before the odd VB dialogs started appearing).
    • Restore.

     

    If you don't have a clean backup, it would probably work to trash the file and start over, but I wanted to keep my preferences.

  • by Renato Brazioli,

    Renato Brazioli Renato Brazioli Apr 30, 2013 10:23 AM in response to Rob MacIntyre
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 30, 2013 10:23 AM in response to Rob MacIntyre

    It worked fine in my case, thanks!

  • by eltorobravo,

    eltorobravo eltorobravo Jun 25, 2013 10:10 AM in response to Rob MacIntyre
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 25, 2013 10:10 AM in response to Rob MacIntyre

    I'm having this problem, but the com.microsoft.Word.plist file doesn't exist either on my Mac or in any of my Time Machine backups . . ..

  • by eltorobravo,

    eltorobravo eltorobravo Jun 25, 2013 10:55 AM in response to eltorobravo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 25, 2013 10:55 AM in response to eltorobravo

    Tried a custom re-install of Office for just Visual Basic and that didn't work.  Had to do a full reinstall of Office 2011, which wasn't nearly as painfull as I thought, and all my prefs are in tact.

  • by phyzzx,

    phyzzx phyzzx Aug 1, 2013 7:02 PM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 7:02 PM in response to breadbin

    I had the same problem after Migration Assistant.  Verify/Repair Disk Permissions did no good.  What worked for me (from another forum):  start up Endnote then Customize > Deinstall.   (This program creates references while you type in Microsoft Word.)  After doing so, Word started up without complaint.

  • by Brookhaven,

    Brookhaven Brookhaven Aug 4, 2013 10:38 AM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2013 10:38 AM in response to breadbin

    Mmm - just found this problem too.

    Migrated to new machine OK, (a 2010 Macpro Mtn Lion), but although Excel & Word seemed to work normally, Visual basic give me the "Can't load Visual basic For Applications" error message.

     

    Tried a custom install for VBA only - and wheheee - it worked. Ran my macro, which then froze Excell and had to force quit Excel. Tried the VBA editor to look for any errors, but just received the error message again. Rats.

     

    Tried some of the suggestions above - trashing preferences etc - but no effect.

     

    Saw another suggestion to change the name of the hard drive name back to its original name, and now it seems to work OK.

     

    You cant make this stuff up sometimes.

  • by sacm,

    sacm sacm Aug 20, 2013 5:39 PM in response to phyzzx
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2013 5:39 PM in response to phyzzx

    This worked perfectly for me - same situation (used migration assistant to move apps to new mac). Did you encounter problems when re-installing EndNote? Or did you just stay away from it after this...

    Thanks so much!

  • by euriaut,

    euriaut euriaut Sep 16, 2013 11:44 AM in response to sacm
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 16, 2013 11:44 AM in response to sacm

    I was having the same problem on my macbook air - for similar reasons (migrating from one mac to another).  For a while it would work ok if I just clicked "ok" on the screen with the error message (saw the screen twice, clicked ok twice each time!) that appeared when starting Word.  Then - after a system upgrade I think - it crashed Word at startup and I had to force quit to get out.  Happily problem is now solved - upgraded to Endnote X6.   However, you have to make sure you uninstall and then trash earlier versions of Endnote.

  • by johnfrombraddan,Solvedanswer

    johnfrombraddan johnfrombraddan Nov 9, 2013 8:29 AM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 9, 2013 8:29 AM in response to breadbin

    Used Mavericks migration asstant to move to a new MacBook Pro 7 days ago and Word became unusable with Dragon Dictate for Mac with the 'Can't load Visual Basic for Applications' message.

     

    After talking to the nice people at Apple support, they suggested calling the Microsoft Mac team- who wanted £65 to talk to me.  Decided, with Pages installed, that Word wasn't worth  the money to me, so politely declined and went back to the forums and worked through the suggestions to delete the preferences, run the updates again, using Font book to repair fonts & co

     

    Tried the  'rename the HD to the same as the original' suggestion without sucess-

     

    The only thing that worked for me was to reinstall Office from the disk image. Painless -- and the reinstalation preserved my registration and templates. Only problem was locating my copy of the disk image!

     


     


  • by John Christopher1,

    John Christopher1 John Christopher1 Jan 10, 2014 11:11 PM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jan 10, 2014 11:11 PM in response to breadbin

    Same problem. I had Endnote X6 and X7 installed. What worked for me was to uninstall X6 only. (Customize-->Uninstall)

  • by LokiNC,

    LokiNC LokiNC Aug 4, 2014 10:54 AM in response to phyzzx
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2014 10:54 AM in response to phyzzx

    Worked for me, too. Something with Endnote 7 on OsX

  • by aleca72,

    aleca72 aleca72 Aug 22, 2014 8:07 PM in response to sacm
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 22, 2014 8:07 PM in response to sacm

    same issue here. deinstalled endnote x7 & it fixed the problem - but now not sure what to do about endnote???? did you put it back on? and if so, how?

    thx!

    aleca

  • by Celebrith,Helpful

    Celebrith Celebrith Nov 6, 2014 6:08 PM in response to breadbin
    Level 1 (22 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 6, 2014 6:08 PM in response to breadbin

    I used Migration Assistant to move from Yosemite on my 2011 MacBook Pro to my 2014 MacBook Pro, and this happened to me.  I have EndNote X6 installed, and I was able to fix it without removing EndNote entirely.

     

    Start EndNote X6

    Open Customizer on the EndNote X6 menu

    UNCHECK the "Cite While You Write" option (this is the option that installs the problematic code in Word).

    Click Next (rather than Uninstall)

    Click Next again (even though their window says that they'll be installing the feature, it actually removes it from Word.

    Click Done.

    Now you can exit EndNote X6 (or not) and start Word (I have Word 2011), and it works fine.  No more VBA error that makes it unusable.

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