XL2000: Crash Saving Workbook If Module Name Contains Equal Sign

When you save a workbook that contains one or more module sheets, you receive an error and Microsoft Excel quits without saving the workbook.

Windows 95 or Windows 98

The following error appears when you try to save the workbook: If you click Details the following error appears:

Windows NT 4.0

The following error appears when you try to save the workbook: NOTE: The memory address of the errors may vary.

This problem may occur if the workbook contains a module sheet with a name that contains an equal sign (=).

Module names can contain only alphabetic, numeric and underscore characters; the equal sign character is not valid for module names. However, versions of Microsoft Excel earlier than Excel 97 allowed module sheet names to contain equal signs. Microsoft Excel 2000 can successfully open these files. However, when you attempt to save the workbook in the Microsoft Excel 2000 file format, you receive an error, and the workbook is not saved.

To work around this problem, change the name of the module sheet to a valid Microsoft Excel module name before you save the file. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the workbook.
2. Press ALT+F11 to activate the Visual Basic Editor.
3. Click Project Explorer on the View menu to display the Project Explorer.
4. In the Project Explorer, double-click the Modules folder for the workbook.
5. Select the module that has an equal sign in its name and press F4 to display the Properties window for that module.
6. In the Properties window, change the name of the module so that it contains only valid characters (alphabetic, numeric and underscores are valid). For example, you could change the name VB=Module to VB_Module.
7. On the File menu, click Close and Return to Microsoft Excel.
   
   You should now be able to save the workbook without receiving the error message described in this article.

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