OFF97: Invalid Page Fault in Ole32.dll Closing File (180188)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
  • Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
  • Microsoft Access 97
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows
  • Microsoft Office Binder 97
This article was previously published under Q180188

WARNING: The information in this article has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports. ANY USE BY YOU OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS ARTICLE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Microsoft provides this information "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose

SYMPTOMS

When you close an Office 97 file, you may receive the following error message:
This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.
If you click Details, an error message similar to the following appears:
<PROGRAM> caused an invalid page fault in module OLE32.DLL at <address>

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the Office item log file, Offitems.log, is damaged.

WORKAROUND

To troubleshoot this error, isolate the problem to corruption in the Offitems.log file, which is located in your Windows folder.

To check for corruption in the log file, follow these steps:
  1. Close all programs.
  2. Rename the Offitems.log file to Offitems.old.
  3. Restart the Office 97 program that caused the error, open a file, make a change to the file, save the file, and then close the file.
  4. If the error does not appear, the problem has been resolved.
  5. If the error reappears, close the Office 97 program.
  6. Find the file called Ole2.reg and double-click the file name.
  7. Click OK.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

The log file, Offitems.log, stores journal information into Microsoft Outlook on the create, open, close, and save events for any file in Office 97. If renaming the log file allows Outlook to start successfully, Outlook regenerates the log files. However, any journal information contained in the original log file will be lost.

The Outlook Journal process automatically records a log of user activities. Each of the Office 97 programs provides AutoJournal features, logging to an Outlook Journal entry each time you open, save, or print a document. With the Journal and the Outlook 97 timeline view, you can find information based on when you worked on a document, where you saved it, or what you named it.

To configure Outlook 97 to use the AutoJournal feature, follow these steps:
  1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Journal tab.
  2. In the Journal tab, you can add, remove, and edit the types of Journal entries.
If you turn on Outlook AutoJournal for any of the Office 97 programs, Outlook attempts to record activities of the Office program directly to the Outlook Journal. When Outlook is not running, the Office program makes a call to Mso97.dll that causes the journal entry to write to "Offitems.log" in the Windows directory. When Outlook starts, the Journal processes these entries after a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) idle time of 30 seconds.

For more information on the Journal feature of Outlook, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

167975 OL97: Office Programs Stop Responding While Outlook Is Busy

166850 OL97: Outlook Starts Slowly with AutoJournal Feature

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:11/24/2003
Keywords:kbbug kbinterop kbpending KB180188
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.