We are using excel interop to create excel reports in a windows service. Everything works fine in Windows 7 OS. But when the service is deployed in Win2K8R2 server, observed that following exception is thrown while saving the excel document using "SaveAs()" method.
Exception - HRESULT: 0x800A03EC
After researching got to know that, we need to use "SaveCopyAs()" or use "Close()" instead of SaveAs() method. I tried using "SaveCopyAs()" method and found out that excel report creation works fine but "Excel.exe" in task manager remains. This is a memory leak problem.
Hence used "Close(true, filename, false)" method and everything works fine, which includes clearing "Excel.exe" process in task manager.
A common mechanism is considered for disposing the COM objects, by assigning the objects to null after usage for both scenarios tested.
Now, I'm confused with the right approach to take it forward. Please clarify.
Look at Open XML SDK
Microsoft does not recommend Office Interopt for server automation
How to: Create a spreadsheet document by providing a file name (Open XML SDK)
There are also commercial packages like Aspose
And free packages such as EPPlus.
tried using "SaveCopyAs()" method and found out that excel report
creation works fine but "Excel.exe" in task manager remains.
--> This is probably because your workbook is not closed.
--> use Marshal.ReleaseComObject() method before assigning null to excel objects.
Operating System : Microsoft Windows SP1 (64 bit)
Office Suite : Microsoft Office 2010
.Net Framework : 4.0
Subject : Microsoft suites of applications (Word, Outlook) does not respond for the time slice when a excel plugin code is running
Details : We have written VSTO (in C#) based add-in for excel application. This add-in is used for refreshing data in current sheet.
Following steps of events occurs on click of a "Refresh" button
•A call is made to internal web service by passing some metadata to download a file
•File is downloaded and stored on windows Temp folder.
•A VSTO code is executed to copy data from downloaded sheet to current sheet using Clipboard Copy / Paste. Data is copied row by row.
At any point in time, we'll have one row of data in Clipboard. Also the number of rows and columns varies between request.
Issue: While refresh functionality is working as expected, we are experiencing issue with other Office suites applications (Word, Outlook).
For the time slice refresh is running, all Office suites of application stops responding.
Can some one help with this issue?
I think you can not control other office suites application. But what you can do is, try to decrease the time slice for refresh button By using different concept like
•A call is made to internal web service by passing some metadata to
download a file
•File is downloaded and stored on windows Temp folder.
I don't know for above two point whether you have used separate thread for that or not? If not use separate thread for that.
You can also use some Optimization trick while copy pasting data from one sheet to another.
Here are some tricks to optimize vba / vsto code
http://tchhabhaiya.blogspot.in/2012/06/17-ways-to-optimize-vba-code-for-faster.html
I think below code will help a lot to you if you haven't used this.
Application.ScreenUpdating = False //To Turn Off at the start of code.
Application.ScreenUpdating = True //To Turn on at the end of the code.
We have developed two projects WCF and ASP.net Website.The WCF service consists of code that performs excel generation
it has something like
Excel.Application xlapp=new Excel.Application();
xlapp.visible=true;
//get data from dataset and process it and then write it to excel
This WCF service is hosted in my ASP.net website on a click button in web page
However when I run this service and asp.net on IIS 7 whole lot of error's are generated
few of the errors are as follows
Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070005."
Then after giving permissions
Application. Microsoft Office Excel cannot open or save any more documents because
there is not enough available memory or disk space. • To make more memory available,
close workbooks or programs you no longer need. • To free disk space, delete files
you no longer need from the disk you are saving to
because of all these errors I am not able to run excel on IIS 7
I have tried all the methods right from Permissions to Authentication but it generates error
I am running XP on my local machine and Win 7 on IIS machine (Is this the problem of WIN 7?)
also this link says Server side Office automation is not supported at all
Isnt there any simple approach to start excel in IIS 7 ?? Or may be I should call excel in my ASP.net website than the WCF service...
Thanks all
Automating Excel should be done with the OpenXML library if possible, since it does not require an instance of Excel to be running, which is questionable at best for server-side processing.
Bas Brekelmans is right. You should go for OpenXML. I spend something like 2-3 days looking for a solution. There are many work arounds. Creating a new path in System32/SysWOW64.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/b81a3c4e-62db-488b-af06-44421818ef91/excel-2007-automation-on-top-of-a-windows-server-2008-x64
Another solution is through dcomcnfg.exe -> Component Services->Computers->My Computer->DCOM Config->Microsoft Word->Right Click->Properties->Security&Identity.
You'll find a lot of questions about it, but might find 1-2 replies which work.
I've one server which works properly with the Automatisation of Office, on the other server it doesn't, can't tell you why. Been troubleshooting for weeks the issue.
Also server-side automatisation is a feature that isn't supported by Microsoft Servers(shouldn't be).
Also, look under which version you compile your project, if it's x64 or x86.
Bas Brekelmans and mike27015 are right.
You should never go for COM component in asp.net project.
Better to use OpenXml library or some third part library like NPOI
NPOI is free and supports both xls and xlsx(open xml) type.
I have IIS7(Windows Server 2008) 64bit but my application is running in 32bit mode. Ms Office 2003 is installed on server. I cannot find {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} in Component Services but I can see {00020906-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} and I assigned all permissions for it too.
If I apply impersonation then I see winword.exe*32 in task manager and page in progress for long long time just like stick, no response/ error. I noticed that page goes stick/always in progress with
'' Passed and no error with impersonation
Dim WordApp As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application = New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application
'' Passed and no error with impersonation
Dim objDoc As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document = New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document
'' With impersonation, this line of code stick page to long process - Documents.Open
objDoc = WordApp.Documents.Open(path)
What I am missing? Same code was working with Windows Server 2003 64 bit.
Office Interop is not designed for sever side use. Microsoft has a Knowledge Base article on the topic of server-side automation of Office, you may want to read though it.
Without knowing what you are trying to use the interop for, all I can recommend is switch to using Office OpenXML for your sever automation. If you are just doing document manipulation it should allow you to do that. For anything else I would recommend looking over the suggestions for alterintives in the KB article I linked.
If you really must there is a hack solution to your problem
if you create the folder C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop and C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop it may solve your problem, but if you can I would highly recommend using OpenXML instead.
Excel Interop is removing images from processed files.
I’m using the Excel Interop, no third-party components are present (that I'm aware of).
The workflow is -- create a copy (target) of a file (template), populate cells, change radio-button state
Create copy (target) of a pre-existing .xslm file (template)
Open target via Excel Interop
Populate target cells, change radio-button state
The worksheet with an image is not modified
Close target
On my dev machine, the target file looks great -- everything is populated, the image is present. NB: on my dev machine, I'm running the code from the VS2010 IDE.
On the production machine -- everything is populated, but the image is not present.
Instead, the following error appears in its place:
NB: on the production machine, it's running as a service, with the Local Service account.
"The image part with relationship ID rId1 was not found in the file"
The entire workbook is opened via the following code:
var workbook = workbooks.Open(targetPath
0, false, 5, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, false, XlPlatform.xlWindows, "",
true, false, 0, true, false, false);
Please note that the worksheet with the image is not manipulated in the code.
The worksbooks (and individual worksheets) are protected. However, the protected template is processed correctly in dev, but not in production. I don't think the protection has anything to do with it (but who knows, right? This is Interop. ugh).
The file was created by another party, and all components (ie, the image) reside within the .xslm structure, not as links to another server.
I have verified that the image is visible on the production machine in the template file, but not in a processed file.
To confirm that this was not an issue in opening the file within the production, I emailed myself a copy, and the image continued to be not present.
I have also confirmed that, on my development machine, processed files do have a visible image.
I unprotected the worksheet, and unzipped the file structure. The .jpg file is indeed not present in the processed target from the production machine.
One more note -- Office 2010 is installed on my development machine, but Office 2007 on the production machine. As a result, I'm using the Office 12 Interop. No runtime errors are generated in either environment.
I am using the Interop (instead of an OpenXml library) because there are ActiveX controls present that must be populated. Note however, that none of the ActiveX controls have any issues -- they are working fine. It's just image-files that are vanishing from processed files (they render fine in the template file).
UPDATE NOTE: There are four other image-files, all .emf on a different worksheet; they are all stripped as well.
As explained in comments (and eventually in an edit to the question), the code was running in production as a service, with the Local Service account.
I am now unsure why I picked this account -- something I found in passing during my research on getting the Interop to run correctly as a service?
However, once I switched from the Local Service account to the Local System account (and checked "Allow service to interact with desktop") it worked. Automagically.
services.msc
select the service
right-click, select "Properties"
select the "Log On" tab
select "Local System account" and check "Allow service to interact with desktop"
"Allow service to interact with desktop" might not be required; Other notes on automating the Interop suggest that other desktop settings are required, however I did an install where those pre-requisites were set but THIS value unchecked; app still worked...
Interop is not supported in sever-scenarios by MS.
There are many options to read/edit/create Excel files without Interop:
MS provides the free OpenXML SDK V 2.0 - see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854%28office.14%29.aspx (XLSX only)
This can read+write MS Office files (including Excel).
Another free option see http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/OpenXML.aspx (XLSX only)
IF you need more like handling older Excel versions (like XLS, not only XLSX), rendering, creating PDFs, formulas etc. then there are different free and commercial libraries like ClosedXML (free, XLSX only), EPPlus (free, XLSX only), Aspose.Cells, SpreadsheetGear, LibXL and Flexcel etc.
It is hard to say whether your specific case (ActiveX controls) is fully supported by any of the above... that is something you need to test...
Even if the ActiveX controls are supported by any of the libraries there is a chance that the ActiveX controls themselves don't work within a Windows Service (permissions etc.).
EDIT - as per comment:
I understand the ActiveX problem and I addressed it from 2 points:
Have you really tested all above mentioned libraries ?
Have you checked with the implementor(s) of the ActiveX controls whether the ActiveX controls could even theoretically work in a Windows Service scenario ?
EDIT 3 - after the UPDATE from the OP:
.emf is a vector file format... IIRC GDI+ is used to render it on current Windows versions... .emf has evolved a bit over time so older OS and/or Office versions can sometimes have problems rendering newer .emf files... which in turn means the problem is the "missing desktop" in the Windows Service AND/OR that your .emf files are "too new" for the production machine.
(a) Not supported, don't do it https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/257757
(b) Anyway, if you have to do it (and cannot give desktop access to your process, as suggested in the accepted answer), you can mess with the contents and permissions in C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile, as suggested by this answer.
I had to create and allow permissions to the Desktop and to the INetCache folders. Checking (and solving) failed access attempts in paths beginning with C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile with the help of Process Monitor was what got me out of the annoying problem and pointed out at INetCache permissions as the reason of the failed insertion of images.
You just have to add permisions to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache or C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache(depends on your system version) folder and images will shown
You're probably on your own, since Excel isn't supported in a server environment as #Yahia correctly points out.
Your mention of ActiveX controls is a red flag - maybe some of your ActiveX controls require Excel to run under an account with a profile?
All you can do is debug this yourself, probably best to proceed by eliminating the possible sources of different behaviour in your dev and production environments.
Try using the same Office version in both environments
Are you using Cassini in your dev environment? (i.e. running under your own login) If so, perhaps try with IIS running under a service account with no profile
Try removing the ActiveX components one by one to see if one of those is having an impact
... etc ...
I'm facing the same issue with powerpoint on Desktop (not a service) by copying a slide with picture from a template. (when getting about 200 copy paste in 1 presentation, but 1300 slides with same picture works fine ???)
It is hard to get this issue, I think it is hardware related, like RAM errors, but not sure
only 1 client of hundred get this error, so i think it is hardware related.
Note that i have a website that provide an Excel automataion and it works PERFECTLY, even "it is not supported by MS blah blah...." !
Your excel file seems to be corrupted, you have to find how.