A few weeks ago I had a call from a Wessex Professional user about a problem she was having, trying to update her moulding records from an Excel file. I was quite busy framing at the time (the day job) so I said I'd try to repeat the issue that evening at home, not expecting a problem.
Within a few minutes of running a test the same error message appeared ("unexpected error from external database driver (1)") - problem time!
I put the error message into Google and found that other people had the same problem, and the cause was the latest Windows update.
Now I'm a firm believer in the saying "If it ain't broke - don't fix it". Unfortunately it was broken and I had to fix it!
Very quickly I came up with one solution, but that involved expecting the user to download and install 100mb of new database engine. Ok if nothing else could be done, but not ideal.
The breakthrough came when I found a DLL that returned data from an Excel file (DLL's are small files that add functionality to a program). The slight fly in the ointment was that the data came in a slightly different form which meant that a section of code had to be rewritten. Overwriting code that had worked perfectly well upto the Windows Update was rather galling, particularly as it is quite complex (loops within loops). However, after much head-scratching and testing a new program version came into being.
So, download ver. 4.4.4 from the Wessex website and all will be well.
