How to close Excel so EXCEL.EXE stops running in task manager

Question

I have an access database that opens an excel file, updates information in it and then runs a macro several times then closes the excel file. The problem is, the EXCEL.EXE instances are still active even once the code is done executing and Access has been closed. I have tried all of the recommendations from this post on both the Access side and as a macro in the excel file that is called after the main macro is run and no matter what the process is left running. I have double checked and there is nothing else opening a reference to Excel anywhere else in the code that runs and the excel macro does not open a new instance of Excel either.

I'm using Excel 2016 and Access 2007 (due to company policy we aren't allowed to upgrade to a newer version of Access).

The original code I'm using to open the excel file, run the macro and close the excel application is as follows:

Dim XL As Excel.Application
Dim WB As Excel.Workbook
Dim WS As Excel.Worksheet

Set XL = New Excel.Application
XL.Visible = False
XL.DisplayAlerts = False

Set WB = XL.Workbooks.Open(Exporter)
Set WS = WB.Sheets(1)

For i = 0 to 9
    '-Generate data to place in excel sheet here-
    WS.Range("A1") = SomeData
    WS.Range("B1") = SomeOtherData
    XL.Run "Excel Macro"
Next i

Set WS = Nothing
WB.Close False
Set WB = Nothing
XL.Quit
Set XL = Nothing

This looks ok, so I assume it's in the Excel macro. Try changing the code in “Excel Macro” to something trivial (or nothing). And please don't use typographic quotes in code. — Andre
I made a sub that just printed a comment with debug.print and terminated and looking in the task manager the new instance of EXCEL.EXE does not terminate. — 110SidedHexagon
Crazy idea: keep a reference to all objects you're accessing (including the Sheets collection, and every accessed Range object), and Set them to Nothing in your cleanup code. That shouldn't be necessary, given this is VBA code - but in COM interop code that's how you'd get a lingering ghost process to terminate properly. — Mathieu Guindon
Try running your code with XL.Visible = True to verify that that there are not any dialogs that are not suppressed by XL.DisplayAlerts = False. — TnTinMn
I'm with @TnTinMn - comment the .Visible and .DisplayAlerts lines until you get it sorted. There's something in your Excel Macro that's hanging - those lines are hiding something from you. — FreeMan

110SidedHexagon 110SidedHexagon · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-09T20:54:53

It looks like it wasn't actually an issue with the code. My company has a watermark COM Add-In for Excel that loads automatically when Excel is opened, and apparently having COM Add-In loaded in the instance of Excel created by my code is not allowed to stop execution as long as the Add-In is loaded as per the discussion in this SO question. I had to turn off the COM Add-In manually due to not having the permissions to do it via VBA, but I suspect that the following code should turn off any offending COM Add-Ins given you have the proper permissions.

For i = 1 To XL.COMAddIns.Count
    XL.COMAddIns(j).Connect = False
Next i

How to close Excel so EXCEL.EXE stops running in task manager

1 Answers