[python-win32] Error Quitting Excel Instance when One is Already Open

[Mark Hammond]

Sadly this is all under the control of Excel, so I've no good advice. 
The poor advice I can offer is (1) for your own piece of mind, see if 
you can get the same basic behaviour with wscript and a .vbs script, (2) 
to try and see if you can find a similar problem in any 
language/environment (eg, wscript) and how they worked around it and 
finally (3) see if you can worm around it by catching that exception 
then discarding the object you have and re-connecting to that instance 
using normal Dispatch().

HTH,

Mark

On 25/05/2011 5:08 AM, Mark Mordeca wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I am having a problem with using win32com to open an instance of Excel
> when there is already one open.   I would appreciate any help.
>
> My example goes as follows:
>
> The user has an Excel file (and therefore an EXCEL.exe process) open
> already.
>
> I do:
>
> xl=win32com.client.DispatchEx("Excel.Application")   #create a new
> instance of EXCEL.exe that will not interfere with the already open
> process.  It remains hidden.
>
> book=xl.Workbooks.Open(filename)                       #open the excel file
>
> There are now 2 EXCEL.exe’s in the Task Manager.
>
> After this, but before I am done with the Excel file I opened with
> DispatchEx, the user then closes their open Excel file.  There is now
> only one EXCEL.exe in the task manager, supposedly the one that I opened
> with DispatchEx.
>
> I then call:
>
> try:
>
>     book.Close()
>
> and receive the error:
>
> Exception pywintypes.com_error: com_error(-2147418111, 'Call was
> rejected by callee.', None, None)
>
> I then go into an except statement and do:
>
> nbooks=xl.Workbooks.Count <--FAILS HERE
>
> if not xl.Visible and nbooks==0:
>
>                  # if excel is not visible and there are no books open,
> close excel.
>
>                  # Do this because another program may have excel open
> in the background.
>
>                  print "Asking Excel to Quit"
>
>                  xl.Quit()
>
> xl=None
>
> At “FAILS HERE” I get the same error again: “Exception
> pywintypes.com_error: com_error(-2147418111, 'Call was rejected by
> callee.', None, None)” and the EXCEL.exe is left hanging in the process
> manager, which I have to now manually kill.
>
> Can anyone help me with this error and how to keep connected to the
> Excel instance I opened with DispatchEx no matter what the user does
> with their own open Excel which includes the user closing it?
>
> Thank you for your assistance.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
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