Microsoft investigates July updates breaking Access applications

Microsoft is investigating user reports that MS Access runtime applications stop opening after installing this month’s Patch Tuesday Office/Access security updates.

According to customers’ complaints on Microsoft’s official community website and Reddit, July’s cumulative updates trigger this issue for MS Access 2016 and MS Access 2013 are KB5002112 and KB5002121, respectively.

“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 Microsoft Answers thread.

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The company also acknowledged this as a known issue in the support documents detailing the two buggy Microsoft Office security updates.

“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’,” the advisory reads.

“Additionally, the file won’t open. Microsoft is researching this issue and will update this article when a fix is available.”

Affected users report that the bug affects MS Access compiled databases (e.g., MDE, ACCDE), including on MS Access in Office365.

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Remove buggy updates to address this known issue

While Microsoft did not provide a workaround or a temporary fix until they released an update to address this known issue, customers who reported being impacted said that removing the offending updates would resolve the problems.

However, keep in mind that uninstalling these security updates will also remove security updates addressing a medium severity Microsoft Office security feature bypass vulnerability (CVE-2022-33632).

This is because Microsoft bundles all security fixes into a single update. Removing the cumulative updates may fix the bugs but will also remove fixes for security flaws patched during the June Patch Tuesday.

Therefore, uninstalling these problematic updates should be a last resort option and only done if absolutely necessary.

To make sure that the updates won’t be reinstalled, you need to download and run the “Show or hide updates” troubleshooter from here, click on ‘Next,’ select the update that you want to hide, and restart your device if prompted.