In Excel VSTO, how can I check if a worksheet belongs to a closed workbook?

Question

In Excel VSTO, how can I check if a worksheet belongs to a closed workbook?

If I have a reference to Worksheet and I close it's parent Workbook, the reference doesn't go away. But I can't figure out how I should check to make sure these sheets don't exist. Checking for null doesn't work.

Example:

Workbook book = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveWorkbook;
Worksheet sheet = (Worksheet)book.Worksheets[1]; // Get first worksheet
book.Close(); // Close the workbook
bool isNull = sheet == null; // false, worksheet is not null
string name = sheet.Name; // throws a COM Exception

This is the exception I get when I try to access the sheet:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException was caught
  HResult=-2147221080
  Message=Exception from HRESULT: 0x800401A8
  Source=MyProject
  ErrorCode=-2147221080
  StackTrace:
       at Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel._Worksheet.get_Name()
       at MyCode.test_Click(Object sender, RibbonControlEventArgs e) in c:\MyCode.cs:line 413
  InnerException:

This wouldn't even be an issue if I could check for a workbook delete event, but Excel doesn't provide one (which is really annoying).

Is there some convenient way to make sure I don't use these worksheets?

c#

excel

com

vsto

comexception

asked on Stack Overflow Mar 6, 2012 by

Kris Harper

3 Answers

I use this method :

        private void releaseObject(object obj)
    {
        try
        {
            System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(obj);
            obj = null;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            obj = null;
            MessageBox.Show("Exception Occured while releasing object " + ex.ToString());
        }
        finally
        {
            GC.Collect();
        }
    }

or you can try something like this:

    static bool IsOpened(string wbook) 
{ 
    bool isOpened = true; 
    Excel.Application exApp; 
    exApp = (Excel.Application)System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Excel.Application"); 
    try 
    { 
        exApp.Workbooks.get_Item(wbook); 
    } 
    catch (Exception) 
    { 
        isOpened = false; 
    } 
    return isOpened; 
}

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 6, 2012 by

Andrew • edited Mar 6, 2012 by

Andrew

If the other solutions fail, another way to handle this is to store the name of the workbook after it opens, then check to see if that name exists in the Workbooks collection before referencing the sheet. Referencing the workbooks by name will work since you can only have uniquely named workbooks in each instance of Excel.

public void Test()
{
    Workbook book = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveWorkbook;
    string wbkName = book.Name; //get and store the workbook name somewhere
    Worksheet sheet = (Worksheet)book.Worksheets[1]; // Get first worksheet
    book.Close(); // Close the workbook
    bool isNull = sheet == null; // false, worksheet is not null
    string name;

    if (WorkbookExists(wbkName))
    {
        name = sheet.Name; // will NOT throw a COM Exception
    }
}

private bool WorkbookExists(string name)
{
    foreach (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook wbk in Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.Workbooks)
    {
        if (wbk.Name == name)
        {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Edit: for completeness, a helper extension method:

public static bool SheetExists(this Excel.Workbook wbk, string sheetName)
{
    for (int i = 1; i <= wbk.Worksheets.Count; i++)
    {
        if (((Excel.Worksheet)wbk.Worksheets[i]).Name == sheetName)
        {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 8, 2012 by

Peter Majeed • edited Mar 15, 2012 by

Peter Majeed

I've not tried this, but you could check if the Workbook sheet.Parent exists in the Application.Workbooks collection.

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 6, 2012 by

Joe

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