i have a portable application i wrote 10+ years ago, which i copied on to a computer, where it worked fine, until i installed office, i now get error 68 device unavailable as soon as i try to start the program, i believe it is caused by trying to reference stdole32 version 2, when office has now installed a later version

i see that any new project i start already has a reference to ole automation, is this particularly required? or should it only be referenced when actually needed?

i am sure i can fix the immediate problem, but am interested for future projects, or how to avoid update problems