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Debugging information for 'Excel.exe' cannot be found or does not match

I'm using Visual Studio 2013 to write a C++ DLL, then EXCEL meant to load the DLL via VBA. After setting in Visual Studio Project Property -> Configuration Properties -> Debugging -> Command = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE , I started debug, then a dialog comes out:

Debugging information for 'Excel.exe' cannot be found or does not matach. Cannot find or open the PDB file. Do you want to continue debugging?

After I click yes, I notice VS is trying to download a lot of pdb files and fail:

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\advapi32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcrt.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rpcrt4.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sspicli.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

'EXCEL.EXE' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cryptbase.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.

and etc, etc, though finally the debugging is OK.

Is such VS behavior OK? I just find it a bit weird, that to debug my DLL, need to download PDB files of EXCEL.EXE and NTDLL.DLL.

It seems there's a similar post here : How can I debug this error: 'Debugging information for iisexpress.exe cannot be found or does not match'? . But that one is a MVC project (mine is C++) and Visual Studio settings are different.

Solution

  • Cannot find or open the PDB file.

    Generally this error is related to the symbol loaded. We need to enable the symbol Server under TOOLS->Option->Debugging->Symbols, and check the module window and make sure that all symbols are loaded successfully.