FIX: C0000005 Fatal Error Importing Chinese Excel 97 Worksheet (221640)

SYMPTOMS

Running Visual FoxPro 6.0 U.S. version on a Traditional Chinese Windows 95 or 98 operating system and attempting to import a Traditional Chinese Excel 5.0 or 97 worksheet with DBCS character sheet name causes Visual FoxPro to produce the following error message:

Fatal Error: Exception code=C0000005

The error message also occurs if you are running Visual FoxPro 6.0 US version on the US version of the Windows NT 4.0.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are 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:

194022 INFO: Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs, What, Where, Why

194295 HOWTO: Tell That Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs Are Installed

MORE INFORMATION

The above error also occurs in Visual FoxPro 6.0 if the Excel worksheet has Simplify Chinese character or Korean character as the sheet name. The above error will not occur if is using the Import Wizard from Visual FoxPro 6.0.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

Create an workbook with Traditional Chinese Excel 97.
Save the Excel workbook as book1.xls and type in Chinese characters for the sheet name.
Run Visual FoxPro 6.0, select the File menu pad and the Import menu bar to import the Excel workbook.
In the Import dialog, click the ellipses (...) button next to the From text box to select book1.xls.
Then, click the Sheet drop-down.

Immediately after clicking the drop-down, Visual FoxPro 6.0 produces the following error and then terminates:
C0000005 Fatal Error
The above error message also occurs if the following command is issued in the Command window:
```
IMPORT FROM book1.xls TYPE XL8 SHEET <Chinese sheet-name>
						
```