Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC Error

I am getting "HRESULT: 0x800A03EC" error when running Excel add-in with following code:

Excel.Range rng = ActiveSheet.Cells[x, y] as Excel.Range;                
string before = rng.Value2; 
string cleanV = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(before, @"\s+", "");
rng.set_Value(cleanV);

When error happens X and Y are set to 1, thus Excel range is not violated. I searched extensively and tried a number of ways of setting the cell value (eg. Cells[x,y], range.set_Value()) but am at loss why this error happens and how to avoid it.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Below are exception details:

---

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException was unhandled by user code
  HResult=-2146827284
  Message=Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC
  Source=""
  ErrorCode=-2146827284
  StackTrace:
       at System.RuntimeType.ForwardCallToInvokeMember(String memberName, BindingFlags flags, Object target, Int32[] aWrapperTypes, MessageData& msgData)
       at Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range.set_Value(Object RangeValueDataType, Object value)
       at ImportValidation.ThisAddIn.removeAnySpaces(Int32 x, Int32 y) in c:\Users\dshevelev\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\ImportValidation\ImportValidation\ThisAddIn.cs:line 354
       at ImportValidation.ThisAddIn.ReadHeaders(Hashtable columnAddress) in c:\Users\dshevelev\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\ImportValidation\ImportValidation\ThisAddIn.cs:line 123
       at ImportValidation.ThisAddIn.mapColumns() in c:\Users\dshevelev\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\ImportValidation\ImportValidation\ThisAddIn.cs:line 493
       at ImportValidation.Ribbon1.button6_Click(Object sender, RibbonControlEventArgs e) in c:\Users\dshevelev\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\ImportValidation\ImportValidation\Ribbon1.cs:line 55
       at Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonPropertyStorage.ControlActionRaise(IRibbonControl control)
       at Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonPropertyStorage.ButtonClickCallback(RibbonComponentImpl component, Object[] args)
       at Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonManagerImpl.Invoke(RibbonComponentCallback callback, Object[] args)
       at Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)
       at Microsoft.Office.Tools.Ribbon.RibbonManagerImpl.System.Reflection.IReflect.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] args, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParameters)
  InnerException: 

Got same error in this line

 Object temp = range.Cells[i][0].Value;

Solved with non-zero based index

 Object temp = range.Cells[i][1].Value;

How is it possible that the guys who created this library thought it was a good idea to use non-zero based indexing?

This is a common but poorly documented Excel COM Error. I've seen it documented as "NAME_NOT_FOUND", meaning that Excel's COM layer is disabled, and can't find the COM property or method name.

I get this error consistently when running the COM code while Excel is 'busy', for example if you set a timer that will start the code, and the code starts running while the user is editing a cell or pressing down their mouse button, then you'll always get this error. This error only happens when the code runs on the main Excel thread, but seems to be the equivalent of error VBA_E_IGNORE = 0x800AC472, which you get when calling the Excel COM object model from another thread, while Excel is 'busy'.

The only workaround seems to be to retry (with some small delay) the COM call until it succeeds - when Excel is no longer 'busy'.

Check your start indexes. Its start from 1 not 0 for Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel range objects. I had received same error because of my loop start value.

Go to Excel Options > Save > Save Files in this format > Select "Excel Workbook(*.xlsx)". This problem occurs if you are using an older version of excel file (.xls) instead of .xlsx. The older version does not allow more than 65k rows in the excel sheet.

Once you have saved as .xslx, try executing your code again.

edit ----

Looking more into your problem, it seems that the problem might be locale specific. Does the code work on another machine? What value does the cell have? Is it datetime format? Have a look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320369

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eric_carter/archive/2005/06/15/429515.aspx

Got this error also....

it occurs when save to filepath contains invalid characters, in my case:

path = "C:/somefolder/anotherfolder\file.xls";

Note the existence of both \ and /

*Also may occur if trying to save to directory which doesn't already exist.

We had the same problem and found for us the solution :

> Please make this folder. C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop ·Windows 2008 Server x86
> Please make this folder. C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop

I know this is old but just to pitch in my experience. I just ran into it this morning. Turns our my error has nothing to do with .xls line limit or array index. It is caused by an incorrect formula.

I was exporting from database to Excel a sheet about my customers. Someone fill in the customer name as =90Erickson-King and apparently this is fine as a string-type field in the database, however will result in an error as a formula in Excel. Instead of showing #N/A like when you're using Excel, the program just froze and spilt that 0x800A03EC error a while later.

I corrected this by deleting the equal sign and the dash in the customer's name. After that exporting went well.

I guess this error code is a bit too general as people are seen reporting quite a range of different possible causes.

Got the same error when tried to export a large Excel file (~150.000 rows) Fixed with the following code

Application xlApp = new Application();
xlApp.DefaultSaveFormat = XlFileFormat.xlOpenXMLWorkbook;

I got the same error whilst using Excel 2003 DLLs and trying to write to the 257th column. Excel 2003 limits maximum column per worksheet to 256, thus raising this exception.

For detailed limitations of Excel 2003, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/excel-help/excel-specifications-and-limits-HP005199291.aspx

Starting from Excel 2007, column limitation is increased to 16384 columns, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/excel-help/excel-specifications-and-limits-HP010073849.aspx

This must be the world's most generic error message because I got it today on the following command using Excel Interop:

Excel.WorkbookConnection conn;
conn.ODBCConnection.Connection = "DSN=myserver;";

What fixed it was specifying ODBC in the connection string:

conn.ODBCConnection.Connection = "ODBC;DSN=myserver;";

On the off chance anyone else has this error, I hope it helps.

I was receiving the same error some time back. The issue was that my XLS file contained more than 65531 records(500 thousand to be precise). I was attempting to read a range of cells.

Excel.Range rng = (Excel.Range) myExcelWorkbookObj.UsedRange.Rows[i];

The exception was thrown while trying to read the range of cells when my counter, i.e. 'i', exceeded this limit of 65531 records.

Adding one more possible issue causing this: the formula was wrong because I was using the wrong list separator according to my locale. Using CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ListSeparator; corrected the issue.

Note that the exception was thrown on the following line of code...

I got this error when calling this code: wks.Range[startCell, endCell] where the startCell Range and endCell Range were pointing to different worksheet then the variable wks.

An additional cause for this error. The code sample below returns the error when the datatable (dtTable) has a blank tablename:

  ' Open Excel workbook
  objExcelApp = New Application
  objExcelWorkbook = objExcelApp.Workbooks.Add()
  objExcelSheet = objExcelWorkbook.ActiveSheet
  objExcelSheet.Name = dtTable.TableName

Still seeing this error in 2020. As was stated by stt106 above, there are many, many possible causes. In my case, it was during automated insertion of data into a worksheet, and a date had been incorrectly typed in as year 1019 instead of 2019. Since i was inserting using a data array, it was difficult to find the problem until I switched to row-by-row insertion.

This was my old code, which "hid" the problem data.

    Dim DataArray(MyDT.Rows.Count + 1, MyDT.Columns.Count + 1) As Object
    Try
        XL.Range(XL.Cells(2, 1), XL.Cells(MyDT.Rows.Count, MyDT.Columns.Count)).Value = DataArray
    Catch ex As Exception
        MsgBox("Fatal Error in F100 at 1270: " & ex.Message)
        End
    End Try

When inserting the same data by single rows at a time, it stopped with the same error but now it was easy to find the offending data.

I am adding this information so many years later, in case this helps someone else.

I was getting the same error but it's sorted now. In my case, I had columns with the heading "Key1", "Key2", and "Key3". I have changed the column names to something else and it's sorted.

It seems that these are reserved keywords.

Regards, Mahesh