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Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon in Excel 2003 and 2007

Written by Christian on August 21, 2008 – 9:19 am


After installation of Adobe Professional 7, 8 or 9, you may get the following error when you start Excel 2003 or Excel 2007:
“Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon”
The cause of this error is PDFMaker.xla, which loads at startup. Since Adobe Professional 8 uses DLL-addins to add the toolbar in Excel, you can safely delete the PDFMaker.xla file on your computer.
Sometimes PDFMaker.xla is located in your profile directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\PDFMaker.xla
Other times, PDFMaker.xla can be located in your Program Files directory.

After you deleted the file PDFMaker.xla, the error “Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon” at startup of Excel shouldn’t appear.

The error described above has been seen in combination with the following applications:

  • Adobe Acrobat Professional 7
  • Adobe Acrobat Professional 8
  • Adobe Acrobat Professional 9
  • Microsoft Office Excel 2003
  • Microsoft Office Excel 2007

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9 Comments to “Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon in Excel 2003 and 2007”

  1. Jim Barta Says:
    September 9th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    I just did a search for files and folders PDFMaker.xla and got two results. I right clicked on them and deleted them and eerything seems to work fine now. Thank You for the advice.

  2. John Freeman Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    I have deleted the PDFMaker.xla file twice and am still getting the error at Excel startup. I am running XP with Office 2007 and Adobe 9 Standard. Any help would be appreciated.

  3. Dean Says:
    October 11th, 2008 at 1:45 am

    Just installed Acrobat Standard v.8 upgrade over Acrobat Standard v 6 (on Vista) and received this error message opening Excel 2002 (SP3). Removing PDFMaker.xla from the profile directory seems to have eliminated the message.

    Thanks for the info.

  4. John Freeman Says:
    October 13th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    After deleting the XLStart folder in Program files/Microsoft Office/Office12 and doing a search for all PDFMaker files and deleting them, I ran Excel and it re-installed and then ran Adobe 9 and it re-installed and everything seems to be working fine now.

    Hope this helps.

  5. Christian Says:
    October 27th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

    Hi John,

    thank you for your answer (on your own post :) ). Because of a holidy, I was unable to reply, but I’m glad you solved the problem!

  6. Srini Lokula Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Dear Christian,

    I have been getting this error for a while but ignored assuming that one of the file’s got corrupted. Today, I googled for an answer and here you are. I followed YOUR INSTRUCTIONS and it DID WORK.

    Thank you for the posting.
    Srini Lokula

  7. deepak Says:
    October 30th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    Thanks a million guys.

  8. CK Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 8:08 am

    Thanks, It works. I uninstalled my NitroPDF professional and removed PDFMaker.xla in Program Files. Thanks a lot!!

  9. dukeofurl Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    Simply removed the xla file and error no longer appeared, excel also seemed to load a lot faster.

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