Microsoft is looking into user claims that after applying this month’s Patch Tuesday Office/Access security updates, MS Access runtime applications stopped opening.
Customers have reported this issue with July’s cumulative upgrades for MS Access 2016 and MS Access 2013 as KB5002112 and KB5002121, respectively, on Reddit and Microsoft’s official community page.
“The Access product team is investigating this issue. Thank you for the report, we will update soon,” Shane Groff, a software design engineer at Microsoft, said in a forum on Microsoft Answers.
In the support manuals outlining the two problematic Microsoft Office security patches, the company also listed this as a known problem.
“After this update is installed, when you open an ACCDE or MDE file in Microsoft Access, you might receive an error message that states, ‘Requested type library or wizard is not a VBA project’,” reads the advisory.
“Additionally, the file won’t open. Microsoft is researching this issue and will update this article when a fix is available.”
Users who are impacted claim that the bug affects MS Access compiled databases (such as MDE and ACCDE), as well as MS Access in Office365.
Remove buggy updates to address this known issue
Customers who reported problems indicated that deleting the problematic updates would repair the issues, despite the fact that Microsoft did not offer a temporary fix or workaround until they released an update to address this known issue.
But be aware that removing these security updates will also delete security fixes addressing a medium severity Microsoft Office security feature bypass vulnerability (CVE-2022-33632).
Microsoft combines all security changes into a single release, which is why this is the case. If the cumulative updates are removed, the issues might be fixed, but security flaws that were fixed during the June Patch Tuesday will also be fixed.
As a result, deleting these troublesome updates should only be done as a last resort and in an emergency.
You must download and execute the “Show or hide updates” troubleshooter from this page, click “Next,” choose the update that you wish to conceal, and then restart your device if requested in order to ensure that the updates won’t be reinstalled.
