Run-Time Errors on Mac M1 Configuration

Mac computers with Apple’s M1 CPU (instead of Intel’s CPU) do not fully support Excel 2019 (and possibly other versions as well) and this results in run-time errors when attempting to run Pralana Gold on the Mac M1 architecture. Until such time as this is resolved, Excel must run in conjunction with Rosetta. Here’s a link to an article that gives a little background on the issue: https://appletoolbox.com/what-is-rosetta-2/ . Here’s another article that provides guidance on specifically what you need to do to make your M1 system run Excel 2019 correctly: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861 .

Here's some specific guidance on how to work around this problem if you have a Mac with the M1 chip, shared by one of our helpful users (thanks, Larry!):

If you control-click on the Excel icon in the Finder, and then on “Get Info”, you can check the box labeled “Open Using Rosetta.”

I just encountered this error and so I downloaded Rosetta. I seem to have the same problem as above, when I try to use the open with feature the choice Rosetta does not come up. Any other ideas? How do I verify Rosetta is running in the background?

Thanks,

Mark

@holbrook30

Not sure if you every got an answer. I was not able to get the issue resolved as Pralana maintains this is an apple/excel issue. I'm not convinced of that since rosetta should solve any of those incompatibility issues. I confirmed I have rosetta installed on my mac mini so it should run in the background if needed. This was my last communication to the admin at Pralana:

Stuart, thanks for your reply. I have Rosetta 2 installed on my Mac but this is obviously not a fix. According to the guidance, I should be prompted to install rosetta if i try to launch an intel based app but that does not happen. In fact when you look at Excel in software section it now shows as a “universal” app which should run fine with M1:

I'm not expecting any help on this so pretty frustrated about paying for the gold version and unable to use the software

Greg

Hi,

I decided just to run it on my main mac which does not have the M1 chip. The program works fine on it.

@gtpotter Greg, this is most definitely not the first case where MS says everything's fine and yet I have to implement workarounds for Excel within PRC. Further, some macro language commands simply do not work correctly on Excel for Macs, which is why you observe flashing screens when doing PRC imports (just one example). Regardless, since MS now believes that the latest version of Excel is compatible with the Mac M1 without Rosetta, I will have to attempt to figure out where the issues are and try to develop workarounds. I plan to start addressing this issue in mid-September and will be soliciting user help. If you and/or others are interested in helping me run test versions of PRC to collect some information and then test potential workarounds as I develop them, I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks!

So, I dug into this a bit on September 28-29 and with help from Greg (who made a couple of posts above) was able to collect some info on where the reported run-time error 91 is occurring. It occurs during PRC initialization in code that's been running fine for years. I Googled for information on this error and there is nothing out there as far as I can tell. So, regardless of any claims being made by Microsoft, the latest versions of Excel are NOT fully compatible with the M1. I then conversed again with Greg and he tried running again with Rosetta 2 (following installation of the latest version of Big Sur) and reported that all now appears to be running fine on his M1 system. I've received similar reports from other M1 users. For the time being, there doesn't seem to be anything else for me to do. I did receive this link from another user and am passing it along here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-office-for-mac-with-rosetta-and-apple-silicon-18db14f2-4abc-4d93-96a4-72a01f6e9721

@Smatthews51

Was this addressed by Microsoft? Someone on the Bogleheads forum was quoting this post, but folks may come away with the idea that Pralana doesn't work on Macs. As that is a widely read forum in the retirement advice community, it's not good to have people making that claim if it is not accurate anymore. I pasted the Bogleheads thread link for reference.

https://bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=411655

@ricke Hi Rick, thanks for the heads-up! Yes, it does appear that Microsoft has addressed this issue and I just updated the note at the bottom of the Pralana Get PRC page accordingly.