FIX: Add Method of Forms Collection Fails in Executable

• Microsoft Visual Basic Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0

SYMPTOMS

You are using the Add method of the Forms collection to load a form. The code works correctly in the Visual Basic development environment, but fails with the following error when the application is made into an executable:

Run-time error '-2147417848 (80010108)':
Automation error.

RESOLUTION

You can work around this problem by creating your own Forms collection. A reference to the form can be added to a collection, and keyed by the Form's name. This will let you load a form by specifying a text string and referencing the matching key field in the collection.

There are two options with this approach. You can pre-load the collection with a reference to all of the forms in the application at startup, which is the approach used in the following example. You may also load the forms into the collection as needed. There is slightly more programmatic overhead with the second approach, because you must check to see if the form is already in the collection. It is also important to note that adding the forms to the collection does not load the forms.

Steps to work around this problem are:

1. Start a new Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.



2. From the Project menu, add a second form to the project.



3. From the Project menu, add a standard module to the project.



4. Add the following code to the code window of Form1:




      Private Sub Form_Click()
         Dim strFormToLoad As String
         strFormToLoad = "Form2"
         loadForm (strFormToLoad)
      End Sub

      Private Sub Form_Load()
         colForms.Add Form2, "Form2"
      End Sub 

5. Add the following code to Module1:




      Public colForms As New Collection

      Public Sub loadForm(strFormName As String)
         Dim frm As Form
         Set frm = colForms(strFormName)
         frm.Show

      End Sub 

6. Run the project and click on Form1.



7. Form2 should be loaded.



8. Stop the project.



9. Choose Make Project1.exe from the File menu.



10. Run Project1.exe, and click on Form1.



11. Form2 should load successfully.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

This bug was corrected in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3. For more information about Visual Studio service packs, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q194022 INFO: Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs, What, Where, Why

Q194295 HOWTO: Tell That Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs Are Installed

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Start a new Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.



2. From the Project menu, add a second form to the project.



3. From the Project menu, add a standard module to the project.



4. Add the following code to the code window of Form1:




      Private Sub Form_Click()
         Dim strFormToLoad As String
         strFormToLoad = "Form2"
         loadForm (strFormToLoad)
      End Sub 

5. Add the following code to Module1:




      Public Sub loadForm(strFormName As String)
         Dim frm As Form
         Set frm = Forms.Add(strFormName)
         frm.Show

      End Sub 

6. Run the project, and click on Form1.



7. Form2 should be loaded.



8. Stop the project.



9. Choose Make Project1.exe from the File menu.



10. Run Project1.exe, and click on Form1.



11. You should receive the error message listed above.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbservicepack kbVBp kbVBp500bug kbVBp600bug kbGrpVB kbVS600sp2 kbVS600SP1 kbVS600sp3fix kbCodeSam
Version : WINDOWS:5.0,6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbbug