VBA: Excel won't open Illustrator 25.1

Since 2014 I've been using a VBA script in Excel to open Illustrator and create a document pulling cell data from Excel, row by row to create multiple images on one artboard that we then print on a laser engraver.

Twice since 2014 when Illustrator CC was upgraded I've had problems with the Tools > References for the Adobe Type Library.

The first time it was solved by simply unchecking the "MISSING" one and choosing the new one. The second time I had to downgrade the last CC version to 21.1.0 and turn off auto update.

Fast forward to this week and we have a new computer and that old version of Illustrator isn't availble and I'm having script problems again. I did change a few things so there are no red vba code errors and the code seems to run, however, Illustrator doesn't open at all. It runs and says "Complete" but Illustrator never opens.

I'm not a programmer but I think I understand most of the script and I belive this is what is not working now that was working in v. 21.1.0:

Private appIll As New Illustrator.Application
Private docTags As Illustrator.Document

I'm stuck.

Thanks in advance.