My ProAPOD real estate investment software is an Excel VBA application that I released in 2000. Since then I have had to address the dreaded password prompt at program closing about five times. Although I consider myself lucky–given the more than one thousand customers I have–nonetheless, it is very annoying.
Here’s what happens.
Some customers (not all, just a few), when exiting my program, were greeted with a prompt that required them to enter a password. If they cancelled the prompt, it just reappeared. If they they entered a bogus password, it just reappeared. In fact, only when they clicked the CANCEL button multiple times (some 3 or 4, others 10-15) did the prompt finally vanish and ProAPOD normally close. The issue was not restricted to one specific Windows operating system or Excel version; and I should mention that it never happened to me on any of my three computers.
The first time I encountered this issue was around 2006-2008. It affected three of my customers. In that case it was discovered that Google had an app called “Desktop” (I believe) that was proven to be incompatible with Excel VBA and caused the prompt. Once the customer removed the app, ProAPOD closed perfectly without the password prompt. So it seemed that the problem was solved once-for-all.
But then, to my dismay, the problem began occurring again over the past several weeks. This time, two of my customers were affected. Once again, many years after the problem was thought to be finally eradicated, it reappeared without warning or explanation. Again, only to a few of my than one thousand customers, and again not to me.
My immediate suggestion was to have them sweep and remove any virus, malware and spyware that might have infected their computer. No success. Then I suggested the removal of any com add-on. Again, no success. Then I discovered an article written by Jon Peltier on August 23, 2016 entitled “VB Password Prompt when Closing Excel” posted on his blog, “Peltier Tech Blog”.
In his article, Jon points out several other more currently popular apps that are known to cause this issue (e.g. DropBox). So I instructed my customer to read the article, and it worked. My customer followed Jon’s tips and the mysterious password prompt disappeared and ProAPOD closed without incident. Thank you, Jon.
I strongly suggest that you read Jon Peltier’s article “VB Password Prompt when Closing Excel” if you, too, encounter this strange problem when running an Excel VBA software program.
