VBA Read URL fails with "An error occured in the secure channel support" after website move to TLS1.3

Question

I am using Windows 10

This question is identical to VBA: An error occurred in the secure channel support but with TLS1.3 and not TLS1.2, and also @KarlH7's solution did not work for me.

Function ReadURLIntoString(url)
    Dim url As String
    Dim xmlhttp As Object
    Dim responseText As String

    ' Create a new instance of MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP
    Set xmlhttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
   
    ' Open a GET request to the URL
    xmlhttp.Open "GET", url, False

    ' Send the request
    xmlhttp.send

    ' Check if the request was successful (status code 200)
    If xmlhttp.Status = 200 Then
        ' Get the response text
        responseText = xmlhttp.responseText
        ' Now, responseText contains the contents of the URL

        'remove line breaks
        ReadURLIntoString = Trim(Replace(Replace(responseText, Chr(10), ""), Chr(13), ""))
    Else
        ' If the request was not successful, handle the error
        MsgBox "Error: " & xmlhttp.Status & " - " & xmlhttp.StatusText
    End If
End Function

The VBA reads a code from a website.

After I moved the website to TLS 1.3 (using CloudFlare) then this VBA fails at .send with the error Run-time error '-2147012739 (80072f7d)': An error occurred in the secure channel support

I tried the following with no success

1. using different libraries such as Set xmlhttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0")and experimenting with xmlhttp.setOption(2)=...
2. Opening the Control Panel and selecting Internet Properties/Security/Use TLS 1.3 (Experimental) and rebooting.
3. Changing the registry to set Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.3\Client\Enabled=1 as per here and here and rebooting.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The only way I managed to solve this is by calling cURL from VBA.

Here is simple code to do this. Obviously curl.exe has to be in the C:\temp directory for this to work.

 command = "C:\temp\curl -s -o C:\temp\temp.txt """ & url & """"
 Call Shell(command)

and then reading the contents of C:\temp\temp.txt

Note that the Shell runs asynchronously, so one needs to wait until it has finished. One can do this using omegastripe's suggestion in Excel VBA Wait For Shell to Finish before continuing with script

Public Sub RunCMD(ByVal strCMD As String)
    'Runs the provided command
    Dim wsh As Object
    Set wsh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    Call wsh.Run(strCMD, 2, True)
End Sub

RunCmd(command)

instead of

Shell (command)