[python-win32] Excel "stopped working" after reading in sheet names

[Tim Golden]

On 30/05/2011 21:26, Mark Mordeca wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I would appreciate any help I could get with the following problem.  30%
> of the time after running the following code to get the sheet names out
> of an excel file, I will receive a windows error saying that “Microsoft
> Office Excel has stopped working”.

A few points:

* The underlying problem is almost certainly going to be a subtle
   timing interaction around the refcounting on the pywin32 CDispatch
   objects which are proxying for the underlying Windows objects.
   It's a maze of twisty passages, so I'll let Mark or Roger comment
   if they think there's something to be said.

* I couldn't reproduce the crash after a few times on my Win7 x64 with
   Office 2003, Python 2.7, pywin32 2.1.4. I note that you said it only
   crashed 1 time in 3 so perhaps I didn't try hard enough, but there
   may be some version-sensitivity there as well.

* In general, you don't need to go unsetting sheet or book or whatever
   (unless you have some requirement which is unstated here). If you
   get rid of the "sheet=None" etc. lines, does the crash still occur?

* As an aside: your for sheet in book.Sheets: loop is basically a
   list comprehension in disguise:

     sheetList = [sheet.Name for sheet in book.Sheets]

   Some people don't feel comfortable with list comps which may be your
   case. But just in case you weren't even aware of the possiblility, I
   thought I'd offer it for your further englightenment :)

TJG