I've used COM addins for some years and I've observed that often new versions were the cause of serious issues including crashes at Excel startup or when COM components are used.
From what I understand this is due to the internal Excel plumbing caching some information about the COM addin (inside the XLS/XLSX/XLA/XLAM file) that don't match its new versions: e.g. if a new method has been added to the API, or a new parameter has been added to a method.
This is really annoying as it forces us to remove the references in the VBA editor "Tools" -> "References" menu, close the popup, and add them back, which AFAIK forces Excel to resync with the current state of the addin.
A "simple" fix would be to add a hook on Workbook_Open, for each distributed workbook, to automatically remove, if it exists, then add each reference back.
Do you have any other/better idea ?
Related
I'm looking for some help. I am in need of figuring out how to get an object reference to Microsoft Access 2013 so that I can (through Automation) call some of the already defined functions in the accdb. For instance; I want to automate the process of "RelinkODBCTables" function which repoints the linked tables to another data source from my .net core 3.0 c# application.
I've not been able to successfully get a reference to interop but I may not be doing it correctly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
D-
If you want to
Create a instnce of Access.
Call a VBA sub (say your relink code).
Close the the database.
quit access.
You could use this code:
{
object AccessApp;
AccessApp = Interaction.CreateObject("Access.Application");
AccessApp.OpenCurrentDatabase(#"c:\test\test44.accdb");
AccessApp.Run("MyLinker");
AccessApp.CloseCurrentDatabase();
AccessApp.Quit();
}
So, you don't need any referance at all. Just create a instance of the given applicatin (word, Excel or as per above Access).
At that point, you have full use of the object model, and can use run to call some VBA routine. In above, we call a VBA Sub called MyRelinker.
About the only caution here is that when you create the instance of that object, then all startup code of the application will run. So, if on startup the forms and UI that the developer of the Access program launches any prompt, then you can't "answer" that prompt. So, how well this works will VERY much depend on how nice the application plays on startup, and that calling any of those VBA routines does not trigger some kind of prompt(s) in that Access application. If it does, then you in trouble, since you can't "answer" any of the forms or code prompts that access may very well throw up at the end user.
And, if you do want some "inteli-sense" during coding, then you can add a office "interop" reference to your project. Its not required, but if you not really fluent in the Access VBA + object model, then in place of CreateObject("Access.Application"), if you do referance the office assemby, say this one:
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\
Visual Studio Tools for Office\PIA\Office14\
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.dll
Then you code becomes this:
{
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.Application AccessApp =
new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Access.Application();
AccessApp.OpenCurrentDatabase(#"c:\test\test44.accdb");
AccessApp.Run("MyLinker");
AccessApp.CloseCurrentDatabase();
AccessApp.Quit();
}
However, while you get stronger typing with the reference, you often will "tie" you code to a given version of Access, and a simple use of CreateObject() quite much means that you can create a instance of Any Access installed on the target computer, and it should work going back all the way to office 2000 - a good 20 years of "coverage".
Keep in mind that you CAN NOT create a instance of the Access runtime, the target computer will requite a full version to "create" a instance of the Access.Application object.
You "can" automate the runtime version. This involves launching Access runtime (via Shell()), and then grabbing an instance with "GetObject()" in place of CreateObject().
Edit
I should point out that in the 2nd above code example, and using the office interop-assembly reference, I choose office 14, which is office 2010. In your case, you have to use office 15 (2013).
I have a C# console application that runs many Excel macros.
Each macro makes use of a shared read-only xlsm file that contains many helper functions "helperroutinesnetwork.xlsm". It is effectively a factory for lots of shared vba functionality.
If the C# console crashes irretrievably, when a workbook plus helperroutinesnetwork are open we are finding that the helper workbook gets effectively blacklisted and added to Excel's disabled books.
What this means is that any subsequent macros that need the helper book cannot find or use it until we manually move it out of the Disable list like so:
Is it possible to either:
Write a script that detects if it has been added to the disabled list and even to enable it?
Ensure it is always protected and never allowed to be added to the Disabled add-ins list?
We have developed a VSTO addin for Excel, which pulls excel sheets from a web server, and allows users to manipulate the data on the sheet. It works with a local copy of the file but we don't really care about that copy. But some of our clients have "iManage Integration for Office" installed as well, and these clients experience odd behaviour. In this environment we are not able to cancel the Close event.
More specifically, if a user opens one of our files and makes changes, then closes the file, our event handler fires and prompts them to save changes (to the data on the server). If they choose Cancel, or if they choose Save and the save fails for some reason, we set Cancel = true in an attempt to keep the file open. Ordinarily this works perfectly.
For those clients with iManage, the file closes anyway. If our code has saved the local copy of the file, then the file just closes. If the local copy has not been saved, the user gets another prompt after our prompt, from iManage, asking if they want to save the file. From here, the user could click Cancel and the file remains open. But the users are reporting that it's confusing to see the second prompt after clicking Cancel on the first. And they are not willing to disable the iManage addin. We would like to be able to keep the file open in this case, preferably without seeing the iManage prompt.
Working in a test environment a client set up for me (Excel 2010), I have tried a few things:
I tried setting Cancel on the workbook level BeforeClose and the applicationlevel WorkbookBeforeClose; neither one worked (file still closes whenever iManage is enabled)
I tried to make sure my handler for WorkbookBeforeClose is registered last, by registering it in the workbook level event handler; no change
I can use the iManage ribbon to manually switch to Local Mode, which makes everything work, but I don't know whether/how I can make that change through code.
I can find the iManage addin in Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.COMAddIns; I tried setting its Connect = false, but this gives an error to the effect that only an administrator can connect/disconnect the addin.
I can save the local file during the Closing event, then do SaveAs to create a second copy; the second copy is now active and iManage closes it; then I reopen the original local file. It looks pretty good to the user, but then I have a bunch of COM references to cells on the old file, and these are all garbage. I can probably loop through and serialize them and recreate them with the new file, but it will be time consuming to code and to run, so I'm looking for other ideas first.
Is there any way I can keep the file open, without making the users do anything extra?
UPDATE
Using iManage 9.3.0.0 and Excel 2010, I created a VBA macro with a reference to Worksite Integration Interfaces Library(Ex). The event fires, but the file still closes. If I don't set the Saved property, and I type on the grid, I always get a prompt from iManage asking if I want to save.
Private WithEvents oWS As iManageExtensibility
Private Sub oWS_DocumentBeforeClose2(ByVal Doc As Variant, IgnoreIManageClose As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
IgnoreIManageClose = True
Cancel = True
End Sub
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
Set oWS = Application.COMAddIns("WorkSiteOffice2007Addins.Connect").Object
Cancel = True
ActiveWorkbook.Saved = True
End Sub
You do not need to disable the iManage integration add-in for Office. Your application should detect the presence of the iManage integration add-in and then handle that add-in's own equivalent Close event
To do that, first get an instance of the iManage add-in by examining the Excel Application.COMAddins collection and fetching back the COM add-in instance with a ProgID of either WorkSiteOffice2003Addins.Connect (Excel 2003 or earlier) or WorkSiteOffice2007Addins.Connect (Excel 2007 or later).
Actually there should also be a so-called "backwards compatibility" add-in installed also registered with a ProgID of oUR02k.Connect which you may reference instead. Again, whether that is installed or not depends somewhat on the version of FileSite/DeskSite that is installed on the machine.
That all may seem confusing to you however it's because the add-ins have changed over the years, so it rather depends on how old the iManage client is (i.e. FileSite, DeskSite) as well as the version of Office you're targeting. You may need to compensate for different Excel/iManage client versions in your code
Once you have the right COM add-in reference, examine the COMAddin.Object property. This value represents an instance of the iManage Office integration add-in
From there you can cast that object to the strongly typed COM interface of iManageExtensibility
You're then able to hook into all the Office application events that iManage have hijacked (much like you have done in your application) and respond to those events rather than the native Excel ones.
In your case you will need to monitor the DocumentBeforeClose2 event. Note the character '2' at the end. There is also a legacy event named DocumentBeforeClose but the newer DocumentBeforeClose2 has the following method signature:
DocumentBeforeClose2(object doc, ref bool ignoreimanageclose, ref bool cancel)
Finally, in your DocumentBeforeClose2 event handler add your business logic for cancelling the close event and/or the iManage close event. You do that by setting the ignoreimanageclose and/or cancel Booleans to true/false as appropriate. The doc parameter in this case will be the Excel workbook instance, so you may safely cast it to the Excel.Workbook interface if you wish
PS: if you are developing against the iManage APIs and require support you should consider purchasing the iManage SDK. That SDK contains help on various APIs, code samples, and crucially I believe it gives you access to some dev support.
I have written a C# program which import a product list from a .xlsx file and let the user create an order based on that product list.
When the user is finished, the program builds one or more system specifications based on the order.These specifications is written to a .docx file. I have Office 2007 installed on the computer and are using the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel and the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word namespaces.
The problem:
After I have runned the program, Windows Explorer crashes very often and has to restart. This happens when navigating in folders or when right- clicking on folders etc.
This also happens after the program have been closed and the only solution to make it stop is to restart the computer. It seems like it only happens when I have created the output files (.docx). If i start the program and use it like I normally do, but without creating the word files, the problem don't seem to occur.
After the program have created the output files, Word gets "Visible" to the user for manual editing. The user closes the word application when finished editing the documents.
What can make the Windows Explorer crash when running word automation?
I really need help on this one. Any suggestions are welcome.
After execution, do you have ghost excel.exe and word.exe processes remaining?
These ghost are likely to make the system unstable.
You're likely not releasing properly the COM objects you instantiated via automation.
Use Marshal.ReleaseComObject(yourobj); on each and every COM objects you instantiate. It's a real pain, I know.
Note: be sure that you don't instantiate COM objects without knowing it:
mySheet = myExcelObject.workbooks[0].Sheet[0] won't just instantiate a sheet object, but also a workbook object.
Rule of thumb: never ever use a secondary property on a COM object ( foo.bar.baz ) and release everything.
Final note: don't use office automation at all on the server, it's bad, per Microsoft own words, there are fully managed libraries for that.
I am currently hosting an IE Browser control in a .NET (2.0) Form and using it to load Office files such as Excel and Word thusly:
_ieCtrl.Navigate("C:\\test.xls", False);
The hosting and loading works well except whenever I navigate to a file I am presented with a dialog that asks whether I want to save or open the file. (This is standard IE file-download behavior.) I always want to open it of course and I do not want the dialog to show.
Another issue is that when I close the window that hosts the IE control and the Office doc the document does not close and remains open on disk. This means that subsequent attempts to open the same file via my app or the native office app will fail because of the sharing violation.
Is there a programmatic way of avoiding this dialog and cleaning up resources afterward? I am asking for a programmatic answer because web research has only yielded solutions that entail modifying OS-level settings.
Bounty NOTE:
I am open to any solution to this issue that will allow me to:
Host an Excel spreadsheet inside my application
Work rather transparently (avoid usability issues like the one described above)
Avoid having to make any OS-specific changes that may affect other applications (especially icluding IE)
Is zero additional cost (no licensed 3rd party libs please) Code Project and other open source resources are OK
Not mess around with the DSO Framer ActiveX control, unless a stable version is developed/discovered
Is your intention for the user to be able to work with the Excel file in an Excel-ish way (i.e. columns, rows, formulas, etc.), possibly saving it back? If this is the case, I can't see how you can solve this problem well without relying on COM Interop with the Excel object model or by integrating third-party libraries to work with the Excel sheet. I know you said no paid solutions, but there are some feature-rich 3rd-party controls out there just for working with Excel files within applications.
I noticed in your comment to SLaks that the final product is a "dashboard of sorts". If your intention is to design a a custom dashboard application, have you considered parsing the Excel file(s) to extract the data and then presenting it in a logical manner within your application. This removes the need to directly display and work with the Excel file while still allowing you to work with the data inside that file. If you are trying to get the data outside of the file, here are two approaches among many:
You might consider using the Excel object model and COM interop to read the data from the Excel file into your application. Granted, this includes a dependency on Excel being installed, but it is a possibility. This article has some great code for getting started with reading Excel files in this way.
A better way might be to use a library that doesn't have a dependency on Excel being installed on the local system. This answer suggests using the Excel Data Reader library, available on CodePlex.
I know this answer side-steps your original answer of "hosting MS Office documents in [a] custom app," but in case what you're really interested in is the data inside those Excel files, hopefully this answer will prove helpful.
This is a horrible hack and should only be considered as a last resort: SendKeys.Send("{O}");
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.sendkeys%28VS.71%29.aspx
Something similar to
_ieCtrl.Navigate("C:\\test.xls", False);
(code to sleep or wait may be needed here)
SendKeys.Send("{O}");
Basically, you send the "o" key to the dialog so it presses the "open" option. You are simulating a keyboard presses to click the "open" button. It is hackey because
1) you may need to wait in between
calls. If you send the o key before
the dialog is up it will be missed.
Hopefully the navigate call is finished when the dialog pops (dont know behavior of control in c#). You may need to experiment with the time since different computers will open faster\slower
2) If the dialog is not shown on a
computer, you will be inserting "o"s
into it. This may cause problems when
exiting because it may popup another dialog to try and save
the changes. May be able to prevent this by opening it in read-only mode
3) Different versions or windows may need different sendkeys commands. For example, you may need to send "o" and them the "{enter}" key
4) Probably more :)
If you want to open the file in a separate Excel instance (not embedded in the WebBrowser control), you can simply call
Process.Start(#"C:\Test.xls");
Office was never meant to run in embedded mode, not in a web page or in an ActiveX Document host. Microsoft had time and time again given us the warning. From pulling dsoframer from the knowledge base to skipping the BrowserFlags registry key in Office 2007.
Move to Office add-ins, Excel Web Access or Office Web Apps as quickly as you can.