Latest Excel for Mac no longer compiles - excel

Question

The following code works fine on latest Excel Windows and also on Excel 16.28 on Mac. But on the latest Excel for Mac (16.29 and 16.30) it generates this error: "Compile error: Method or data member not found" on the code line MyShape.Select.
I assume that there is an alternative way to do what I want that the compiler will approve of, but I don't know what it would be. As an alternative, I tried not selecting the shape and just referring to it, but then I get the same error but on the With MyShape.ShapeRange.Fill line.
Dim MyShape As Shape
'Other stuff
Set MyShape = ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeRectangle, 400, 400, DistanceBetweenCells, LineWidth)
MyShape.Select
With Selection.ShapeRange.Fill
'stuff here
End With
I'm hoping that a newer version of Mac Excel, when released, will revert to the older version in allowing the above, but assuming that's not the case, any workarounds?

Answer 1

I like that you're explicitly referring to ActiveSheet, kudos!
The problem is that ActiveSheet is an Object, wich means the compiler is helpless: ActiveSheet.Shapes compiles, but so will ActiveSheet.Shapess - even with Option Explicit specified. The entire expression is evaluated at run-time.
Let's fix that first:
Dim sheet As Worksheet
Set sheet = ActiveSheet
Now sheet.Shapes gets intellisense and compile-time validation, along with subsequent the .AddShape member call. You even get parameter tooltips as you type up the argument list!
What happens next is interesting: you declared MyShape as a Shape, but it's not a Shape you're looking at - the Shape class doesn't have a ShapeRange property, so... where does MyShape.ShapeRange come from then?
If you break execution (F9 to set a breakpoint) after the MyShape.Select call, and then bring up the immediate pane (Ctrl+G), the answer appears:
?typename(selection)
Rectangle
If you press Shift+F2 on the word Rectangle...
Dim myRectangle As Excel.Rectangle '<~ here
...the VBE doesn't seem to figure it out ("identifier under cursor is not recognized"). So we press F2, then right-click somewhere and tick the "Show hidden members" option - and sure enough, there it is:
So your code says "let's use the Shape interface", but works with a Rectangle object. And since that works, it means a Rectangle "is a" Shape: the two interfaces simply describe the same object through different lens, so either works... but then Shape.ShapeRange doesn't look quite right, since the Shape class doesn't define that member and that's the interface we explicitly said we were going to be working with.
If we want to invoke the members of Rectangle, we can - and since we're now showing hidden members in the object browser, intellisense displays the hidden types and members too. If the entire With block is early-bound, everything makes much more sense:
With myRectangle.ShapeRange.Fill
...and explains how the late-bound code off ActiveSheet would work at run-time to resolve the member call, and now the compiler needs a completely other strategy to compile the VBA code: maybe that could shake things up enough to get it to work, maybe it won't. At least the type ambiguities and ignored-by-compiler statements are all gone :)
The thing that's surprising here, is that you can't do that with VBA user code. If you made a MyShape class with a DoSomething method:
'#ModuleDescription "A metaphorical Shape"
Option Explicit
Public Sub DoSomething()
MsgBox TypeName(Me)
End Sub
And then a MyRectangle class that implements MyShape and exposes a member on its own public interface, that yields a MyShape object reference:
'#ModuleDescription "A metaphorical Rectangle"
Option Explicit
Private sh As MyShape
Implements MyShape
Public Property Get Thing() As Object
Set Thing = sh
End Property
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
Set sh = New MyShape
End Sub
Private Sub MyShape_DoSomething()
MsgBox TypeName(Me)
End Sub
And now in any standard module, we can test this - first, all early-bound, and we'll have a factory method that returns a MyShape, to mimick Shapes.CreateShape:
Public Sub WorksMaybe()
Dim r As MyShape
Set r = CreateRect
r.Thing.DoSomething
End Sub
Private Function CreateRect() As MyShape
Set CreateRect = New MyRectangle
End Function
So we run this (on Windows), and I expected, the code doesn't compile:
Late binding however...
Public Sub WorksMaybe()
Dim r As Object
Set r = CreateRect
r.Thing.DoSomething
End Sub
Private Function CreateRect() As MyShape
Set CreateRect = New MyRectangle
End Function
...works? Nope:
Are we not looking at a MyRectangle object? No: we're looking at the limits of late-binding polymorphism in VBA - we created a New MyRectangle, but to the compiler CreateRect returns a MyShape object reference. If we place a breakpoint on End Function, run it, and then type ?TypeName(CreateRect) in the immediate pane (Ctrl+G) when the breakpoint is hit, then despite the declared type being MyShape, the runtime type is clearly MyRectangle.
And it should work - but it doesn't. Error 438, member not found: the late-bound/run-time equivalent of the "method or data member not found" compile error.
And if we use the interface we really mean to work with...
Public Sub WorksMaybe()
Dim r As MyRectangle
Set r = CreateRect
r.Thing.DoSomething
End Sub
Private Function CreateRect() As MyShape
Set CreateRect = New MyRectangle
End Function
...then everything "just works":
Now, I'm not running this on a Mac, but this code compiles for me...
Option Explicit
Const DistanceBetweenCells As Long = 50
Const LineWidth As Long = 2
Public Sub WorksMaybe()
Dim r As Excel.Rectangle
Set r = CreateRect
r.ShapeRange.Fill.BackColor.RGB = vbRed
End Sub
Private Function CreateRect() As Excel.Shape
Set CreateRect = Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeRectangle, 40, 40, DistanceBetweenCells, LineWidth)
End Function
...and systematically raises run-time error 13 as soon as CreateRect returns and the Shape reference gets assigned to a Rectangle - error 13 being "type mismatch". In other words, a Rectangle is not a Shape (!!?!??). Proof, if we make CreateRect return a Excel.Rectangle, we now get the type mismatch error as soon as we try to assign the function's return value, and nothing makes sense anymore: there's something weird going on, and, well, I'm out of ideas - there doesn't appear to be any way to work early-bound with a Rectangle, despite what TypeName(Selection) claims the type is (the class is hidden/undocumented for a reason after all!), which... pretty much destroys all hope, especially if neither With Selection.Fill nor With MyShape.Fill work (it does work perfectly fine here on my Windows box though).
Sending a frown with some repro code through the user feedback feature should get you heard from the product team at Microsoft. I doubt they removed anything from anywhere - but it's not impossible something broke how interfaces are resolved, somewhere deep down in some seemingly unrelated piece of internal API :)

Answer 2

Ok, I think it is figured out. In Mac Excel version 16.29 Microsoft has deleted certain class members for, at least, Shapes. For instance "Fill" and "Select" are no longer available. So any code that refers to them will generate an error.
I'm not sure how extensive this is or any other ramifications, but I do know that the code works fine in version 16.28, and also that the member list in 16.28 shows both "fill" and "select" but not in 16.29. Thanks to Mathieu Guindon above for the input and also to a poster who deleted his thread - both of these people really helped. I've reported the issue to Microsoft.

Answer 3

Answer from Steve Rindsberg (MVP):
Iterate through the .ShapeRange collection:
For x = 1 To .ShapeRange.Count
With .ShapeRange(x)
'...stuff....
End With
Next
I've had a few similar weird ones on Mac where perfectly good code (on
Windows) errors or sometimes make the Mac app go POOF! And disappear.
Iterating the collections this way has been the fix.