Unable to open excel sheet in Protected mode from VB 6.0

[ourspt]

Hi,

I am working on a project in VB6.0 and SQL Server. We use MS Excel for our
reports. We also

use server side COM+ components.

We have a situation where we are not able to open some of the reports in
'protected' mode

(i.e, to prevent the users from making changes to the excel report). When we
try to open

these in protected mode, the application is crashing, giving a Dr. Watson
error.

When we change the VB code to open the excel reports in 'Unprotected' mode,
the applcation

works alright. But in this case, the users would be able to change the
reports as they like.

Why am I not able to open these excel reports in protected mode from my
VB6.0 exe?

Is there a way, where we can prevent the users from making changes to the
excel report, even

if we open it in 'unprotected' mode?

We tried using the 'Read Only Recommended' option but that allows the users
to make changes

and save changes as some other file name (although the users are prevented
from making

changes to the same file) and this cannot be allowed in our application.

Any help in this regard is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance
ourspt