In an Outlook Add-In, objects seem to be kept in memory. As a result when the Add-In is active in Outlook, .eml files can only be opened once. When trying a second time, I get:
We can't open [filename]. It's possible the file is already open, or you don't have permission to open it ...
When the Add-In is disabled, .eml files can be opened multiple times without any issue.
In Add-In code, I placed a Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(obj) at multiple places but it did not help. The code is fairly long and spread of over multiple files. It might be that I missed a release.
Is there any way to easily troubleshoot the situation and identify the root cause.
Try to comment out most of your code and bring it back a few lines at a time until the problem comes back.
As a sledgehammer solution, try to call GC.Collect() after you are done.
Related
I seek advice on how to manage userdefined VBA-functions that are used in several workbooks:
Background:
Over time i have created several Excel workbooks (wbs), each with a slightly different purpose, that are ultimately based on a library of my userdefined functions and class modules (From now on: library). The "master"-versions of the wbs are revision-controlled. The wbs are used by several people.
However, I do not use an addin for the library, and hence the modules and class modules are actually locally present in each wb's specific VBA project. This makes it a nightmare when doing either expansions or corrections, as I have to revisit and implement said alterations in each wb.
Furthermore, in each wb there are unique functions, understood such that those are not intended to be shared. Those functions, however, might utilize the library-functions.
Main-Question: How should one manage vba functions across several workbooks shared by several users?
My considerations/Sub questions:
Should I convert the library to a true addin and discard the local copies in each wb?
How do I tell the users that the add-in is required upon getting a copy of the maser-version?
How does one cope with legacy/local versions/branches that are spread among the users? Both current legacy copys and future legacy copies that might be used for reccuring tasks?
Where should such an addin-in be stored (in a shared folder or something)?
Would it be considered "bad practice" to force load the add-in using the workbook_opensub?
Any advice or guidance in best practice is appreciated.
Edit: I have tried to highlight the main question, please consider the sub questions as my own thoughts on the subject.
Until recently, I had several add-ins that lived on a shared drive. I had the users install the add-in using File - Options - Addins and wrote up the instructions to do it. The copy on the shared drive was read-only. For changes, I would code and test on the dev copy on my machine, then deploy it to the shared drive. The next time the user started Excel, the changes would be there.
Then we wanted more people to have the addins and not all of them had access to this shared drive. Also, people complained when they were off the network that it still tried to connect to the addins. So we went a different route.
We used a program called PDQ Deploy to put the addins in everyone's addins directory, so they had a local copy. We also deployed a script that copied the files from a company-wide shared drive to their addins directory. If they weren't connected to the nextwork, the script would fail silently. Finally, we used group policy to 1) create the registry entries to install the addins and 2) create a scheduled task that kicked off the script every night. Updating every day is overkill, but the files are only a few kbs, so we went with it.
Now I can deploy new versions to the company-wide shared drive and everyone will have the changes the next day (or the day after they're back on the network).
I put my vba stuff on the "personal" workbook (Windows menu : Unhide...) and whatever workbook I am using I can use them from there.
You do have to make sure about knowing which one is acrtive though...
I'm working on an Excel workbook that scans an Outlook folder, pulls the email data and saves the attachment. A later bit of code then reads the data in each attachment and prints it to a master sheet.
I really want to remove the need to save an attachment and just temporarily open it, take what I need from it and then close it.
I've done a fair bit of research and can't find anything that doesn't involve saving it. It's also worth calling out Outlook VBA is out of the question due to security restrictions so it needs to be done from Excel.
Is it possible to do what I want, and do you have any examples/references I can check out?
Thanks in advance
No. To display/open/read the data you need to save it. Even when you preview it inside Outlook, the file is saved at temp location.
You can always save the file (preferably in User's Temp folder) and after processing the file you can delete it from VBA.
To Delete the a file from VBA , use Kill Command. Make sure the file is closed and then
Kill FullFileName
Example: Kill "C:\Temp\abc.xlsx"
I came by this page and was thinking about the best method to distribute my VbaProject.OTM file (located into %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\) to a bunch of ~30 users at my office. Is it better to simply copy/paste the OTM file onto the network and then copy/paste it back to all users' computers (manually or with a .bat) OR would it be better to use the method described in the link above to generate a OPS file and import it back with Proflwiz.exe? What's the difference?
We are all on Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 actually, we might upgrade to 2007 one day but still years from now.
Finally came up with some elements to deploy a Outlook VBA Project. There are a lot of ways to do this, but the easiest way to do so without installing anything and keeping the same methodology would be to run a OTM file directly from a server. I found out that the process outlook.exe has a parameter altvba that allows to specify another path to run the OTM file from. Here is en example:
outlook.exe /altvba "\\myServer\myFolder\myFile.otm"
This allows me to update only one file to get all computers updated. Obviously, if the file is big and the server's ping is on the high side, it may delay the launch of Outlook. The other problem with this method is that everybody will have to shut down Office if you want to update the OTM file on the server (and if you do work in an office where everyone uses Outlook, you do know that it is impossible to get everyone to shut it down at the same time, except if you code a macro to do so eventually). To prevent both those problems, I could setup a batch file to copy the server OTM file clientside everytime there is a new version (just have to check the NTFS last-modify attribute). This way, Outlook will boot with a local file, the batch file take 2-3 seconds to copy the file if needed (or will launch Outlook instantaneously) and there will be no problem updating the OTM file on the server. Users will have to start Outlook with the batch file (or with the slightly different outlook.exe path with the altvba parameter, so either way they need a different shortcut/file to start off the first time). One other advantage of the altvba is that it's still easy for the user to run Outlook without it (to see if the VBA is problematic or not in case Outlook is sluggish) and the file will remain unchanged after a Outlook reinitialization.
Others solutions include a COM complement that can be developed in a lot on languages including VB6 (no conversion needed from VBA). There is also a bunch of tools included into Microsoft Office XP Developer that could help getting the job done (not free however, especially if you need the most up-to-date version).
I've created a small application that basically reads and writes to a single Excel.exe process. It's basically a timer that records the time I use on projects and then store it in an Excel sheet. This works great, however, I've noticed that if I open Excel manually, work on some sheets and whatnot, save and exit etcetc, the process my software use gets broken or something. The same thing that happens if I manually close the excel.exe process and my software doesn't "know".
So I was wondering if it's possible to protect the excel.exe process somehow? To make sure it can't be closed or tampered with in the meantime?
Let me suggest an alternative approach that does not require you to have an Excel process running all the time (after all, this also consumes a lot of system resources):
Let your application record your information. Every now and then -- for example, after a work entry has been finished or a specific time has elapsed -- open the Excel sheet, write the data, and close it again (also closing the Excel process that you are automating). This save operation should not take more than a few seconds and it will (mostly) prevent the problem you are experiencing.
In fact, since Office automation is always a bit painful, an even better way would be to output your data without requiring an Excel process. To do this, you could use
one of the third-party Excel libraries available for .net,
a CSV or HTML file, which can be opened by Excel, or
open the Excel file as a database with ADO.NET.
You cannot protect a process, but you can check the process.HasExited property to find out whether the process has terminated and take action based on that.
Add an exception handler. Either call non-throw methods if possible.
My Application (Vb.net, Access 2003/2007) is to scan Access Database files for activex controls and to generate report accordingly.
Problem:
Getting an error like:
"Insufficient memory to continue the execution of the program."
The above error occurs while scanning for older version of Access files like prior to office 2000.
And the line of code where I get this is as follows:
Dim oForm As Access.Form
Dim oAccess as Access.Application
oForm = oAccess.Forms(objForms.Name)
But it opens the file and form as well.
Need Help:
Whether it is possible to read the file (Access Forms and Reports) or not?
Please provide me reference or any solution.
You appear to doing COM automation of Access to open the forms and then cycle through their controls looking for certain properties.
Another solution would also involve automating Access, but it wouldn't require actually opening the form, and that's the undocumented Application.SaveAsText command. You'd do something like this:
Application.Saveastext acForm, "dlgWebBrowser", _
"C:\Output\dlgWebBrowser.txt"
You would then have to figure out how ActiveX controls are described in that file. If that file looks like the code for a VB form, that's because that's precisely what it is.
The example above had an IE web browser control on it, and after a dump of OLE data, it had this in it:
OLEClass ="Microsoft Web Browser"
Class ="Shell.Explorer.2"
GUID = Begin
0x54c1ea41936d2046b9dc5b29905976e3
End
I would expect that all ActiveX controls will have an OLEClass, but I non-native avoid ActiveX controls on principle because of the problems they can cause if not properly installed when you try to run the app.
In fact, that could be the source of the problem -- if you open the Access form on a machine that doesn't have the relevant ActiveX control registered, it's going to fail, and the form won't open.
My bet is that Application.SaveAsText is going to sidestep that problem entirely, since the form doesn't have to be opened.
I've seen behaviour very similar to this before. Access 97 files will sometimes report an 'out of memory' error if you try to open them on a computer with more than (I think) 1Gb of RAM. The error doesn't always manifest itself immediately - sometimes the project can appear to run normally but crash when you try to open a particularly large object.
In the case where we did run into this the users were running an old Access 97 database on new XP machines they'd been upgraded to with modern amounts of RAM. Tech support for the company tried everything they could think of - including complete office reinstalls, applying all patches etc. but eventually had to resort to removing RAM from the computers - whereupon the errors went away and everything was rock solid again. I am uncertain as to the exact cause, but it will be connected with memory management in the Access 97 file format (I believe the error is on MSDN somewhere but I wasn't directly involved with Tech support hunting the solution down - I'd just written the application many years before)
I'd suggest you're only way out is to use a special, low memory, PC to run the application.