This is my first time posting in stackoverflow. I started learning VB 2010 yesterday (though I do know some Ruby) and have googled this problem a lot but haven't found much.
I've written a program that takes a CSV list of filepaths (all .XLS files) and attempts to open them. These excel workbooks were flagged as unreadable by another program; my program tries to capture the warning, popup, or exception that caused the error. It works for most exceptions (password protected, Unreadable Content, Dangerous File, etc.), but some popups that require you to click the 'OK' button to continue aren't caught. Maybe they aren't categorized as Exceptions or something, I'd love to know. It would be great to at least get the text form of them. Here is my script:
Private Sub runReportButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles runReportButton.Click
Dim Exl As New Excel.Application()
Exl.Visible = False
Exl.DisplayAlerts = False
For Each row As DataGridViewRow In dgvReport.Rows
If Not IsNothing(row.Cells(0).Value) Then
If row.Cells(0).Value.ToString.Contains(".xls") Then
Try
'Open the workbook and attempt to catch the error!'
'Use bogus passwords to cause Password Protected Error, Readonly disabled so the Password popup shows. Update links disabled because it wasn't being caught anyways'
Dim wb As Excel.Workbook = Exl.Workbooks.Open(row.Cells(0).Value.ToString, [ReadOnly]:=False, [WriteResPassword]:="WWWWWWWWWWW", [Password]:="WWWXWXWWWXW", [UpdateLinks]:=False)
row.Cells(4).Value = "Could not catch an error :("
wb.Close(0)
dgvReport.Refresh()
Catch ex As Exception
'Writes the Exception Message to the data grid view'
row.Cells(4).Value = ex.Message
End Try
ProgressBar1.Value += 1
End If
End If
Exl.Quit()
Next row
dgvReport.Refresh()
End Sub
The reason I'm having a problem is that certain popups only occur when I open the file manually. Even with Excel set to visible and display alerts on, programmatically the file opens and closes without any popups. One particular warning is the following:
"One or more worksheets in this workbook have names that contain square brackets:[]. To avoid unexpected results when referencing these worksheets, remove any square brackets from their names."
It doesn't seem like a fatal error, but it causes the other program to flag it as unreadable because we cannot be certain of the integrity of the contents (i.e. the unexpected results). So my need isn't to ignore these popups or improve the other program, it's to capture this pesky popup message. If anyone can shed any light on the duality of this popup's behavior or provide a different approach to capturing alerts it would be much appreciated!
Related
To start with it has been many years since I have done much programming, probably about 15 years, in fact VB 6 was still being taught then so I'm not up to date on anything and can get lost in what I'm reading but I am trying. I'm using Visual Studio 2019 and trying to create a VB Windows Forms App that uses the FileSystemWatcher. Unfortunately the only solutions to my problem that I could find are in C#. I tried to transfer them to my app but couldn't get them to work. Actually Visual Studio wasn't happy with what I put in and wouldn't run at all, probably due to incorrect syntax.
This part of my little app is supposed to copy a file that another program creates, while the other program is running, and place the copy in another folder. It seemed simple, detect that the file had been changed and then copy the changed file. Well I came across a few problems.
The first problem is that if I create an empty file the code works most times with no problems but occassionally 2 copies of the file are created. I could live with that but.
If I replace the empty file with a larger file, the file that it is meant to copy, then it can make 3 or 4 copies and most times produces a messagebox telling me that it can't access the file because it is in use. The main program is also minimised to display the error message, which I don't want.
Even if my app is the only program running and I replace the watched file manually with the larger file I still get the file in use error, so I am assuming that the event has been triggered twice and one of them is the process that is using the file and causing the error.
If I tell the error message to cancel then my program continues and produces only 1 copy of the file. Which is what I do want.
The second problem is that the file being copied is also accessed by another program for a short period imediately after it has been changed and this also causes an extra few copies of it to be made and sometimes a file in use error message box appears, and again the main program is minimised to display the error message. I originally had other IO.NotifyFilters in place that weren't really necassary and thought that they may have been triggering the errors so I removed them, but it made no difference.
The most common error is that the file is in use but there has also been the odd "Unhandled exception has occured in your application. could not find file.". The only reason that I can think of for this error is that the file may have been renamed to a backup file and a new version created by the main program at the exact time my program tried to access it.
From what I have read the FileSystemWatcher can trigger multiple times and I presume that this is what is causing the duplicate copies from both problems.
I need my app to make only 1 copy without the error messagebox appearing as this program needs to run in the background with no user input. Essentially this part of my app is an external program to backup a file when the file changes because the main program changes this file often but only seems to back up the file every few hours.
The following code is what I have used but nothing that I have tried has caught the error so I removed the error event handler. This code was copied from something else that was similar and in C# then modified for my purpose. I thought that the {} were used for C# not VB but it seems to work and if I take them out it won't.
My code for the FileSystemwatcher is:-
WatchFile = New System.IO.FileSystemWatcher With {
.Path = Path.GetDirectoryName(strArkMapFileNamePath),
.Filter = Path.GetFileName(strArkMapFileNamePath),
.NotifyFilter = IO.NotifyFilters.LastWrite
}
' add the handler to each event
AddHandler WatchFile.Changed, New FileSystemEventHandler(AddressOf OnLastWrite)
'Set this property to true to start watching
WatchFile.EnableRaisingEvents = True
The event handler is:-
Private Sub OnLastWrite(sender As Object, e As FileSystemEventArgs)
'Copy the Save file to a new folder and rename it.
My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyFile(
strArkMapFileNamePath,
strBackupPath & "\" & strArkMapFileName & "_" &
DateTime.Now.ToString("dd.MM.yyyy_hh.mm.ss") & ".ark",
Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UIOption.OnlyErrorDialogs,
Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UICancelOption.DoNothing)
End Sub
I added an error event handler after AddHandler WatchFile.Changed, New FileSystemEventHandler(AddressOf OnLastWrite) but that did nothing.
I tried to add an on error statement before the end sub and that did nothing either, I presume because the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UIOption.OnlyErrorDialogs, caught the error first.
I got frustrated and tried to add a statement before the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UIOption.OnlyErrorDialogs, but it didn't like that and I didn't expect it to work.
So how do I catch the errors before the FileSystemWatcher acts on the error?
I don't know what I am doing wrong so any help would be appreciated.
Also if anybody could offer code for what I need to do can it please be code for a Windows Forms App because I don't seem to have much luck in converting C# or anything else.
Edit
I have replaced the My.Computer.FileSystem.CopyFile with the File.Copy method as suggested and added a few extra bits..
Private Sub OnLastWrite(sender As Object, e As FileSystemEventArgs)
'Verify that source file exists
If File.Exists(strArkMapFileNamePath) Then
'Copy the Save file to a new folder and rename it.
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To 3
Try
' Overwrite the destination file if it already exists.
File.Copy(strArkMapFileNamePath, strBackupPath & "\" & strArkMapFileName & "_" & DateTime.Now.ToString("dd.MM.yyyy_hh.mm.ss") & ".ark", True)
i = 3
' Catch exception if the file was already copied.
Catch copyError As IOException
'If copy failed reset counter
i += 1
End Try
Next
End If
End Sub
Although this shouldn't be required because this is done before the FileSystemWatcher is enabled I have added an If statement to check that the files exists before attempting to copy the file.
I'm not entirely happy with the loop but I know under normal conditions that it's not going to be an endless loop.
Is there a way to just catch the specific errors that I would need to deal with or will it be fine the way it is?
I will probably still need to work out how to stop the FileSystemWatcher from sending more than 1 event or somehow make multiple events appear as 1.
The If statement was the last thing that I added and for some reason the program now seems to only make 1 copy and appears to be faster.
The other external program that accesses the file being copied must be slower to react than my program because now it displays a message that it's waiting until my program has finished copying the file.
My program is now performing as it was intended but I believe that it is just a matter of timing rather than the correct code.
I am automating a oft-used paper form by querying the user on a web page, then modifying a base Word document and feeding that modified doc file to the user's browser for hand-off to Word.
The code is Visual Basic, and I am using the Microsoft.Office.Interop module to manipulate the document by manipulating Word. Works fine on the development system (Visual Studio 2015) but not on the production server (IIS 8.5).
Both the Documents.Open() call and the doc.SaveAs() call fail with Message="Command failed" Source="Microsoft Word" HResult=0x800A1066
Things I've tried:
Added debugging out the whazoo: Single-stepping is not an option on the production machine, so I pinpointed the problem lines with debug output.
Googled and found that this problem has been reported as early as 2007, but no viable solutions were reported.
A couple sites mentioned timing issues, so I added several pauses and retries -- none helped.
Some mentioned privileging, so I tried changing file permissions & application pool users -- neither helped.
Enhanced my exception handling reports to show more details and include all inner exceptions. That yielded the magic number 800A1066 which led to many more google hits, but no answers.
Added fall-back code: if you can't open the main document, create a simple one. That's when I found the SaveAs() call also failing.
Dropped back to the development system several times to confirm that yes, the code does still work properly in the right environment.
Greatly condensed sample code does not include fallback logic. My Word document has a number of fields whose names match the XML tokens passed as parameters into this function. saveFields() is an array of those names.
Dim oWord As Word.Application
Dim oDoc As Word.Document
oWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
oWord.Visible = True
oDoc = oWord.Documents.Open(docName)
Dim ev As String
For i = 0 To saveFields.Length - 1
Try
ev = dataXD.Elements(saveFields(i))(0).Value
Catch
ev = Nothing
End Try
If ev IsNot Nothing Then
Try
Dim field = oDoc.FormFields(saveFields(i))
If field IsNot Nothing Then
If field.Type = Word.WdFieldType.wdFieldFormTextInput Then
field.Result = ev
End If
End If
Catch e As Exception
ErrorOut("Caught exception! " & e.Message)
End Try
End If
Next
...
oDoc.SaveAs2(localDir & filename)
oDoc.Close()
oWord.Quit(0, 0, 0)
The code should generate a modified form (fields filled in with data from the parameters); instead it fails to open, and the fallback code fails to save the new document.
On my dev system the document gets modified as it should, and if I break at the right place and change the right variable, the fallback code runs and generates the alternate document successfully -- but on the production server both paths fail with the same error.
Barring any better answers here, my next steps are to examine and use OpenXML and/or DocX, but making a few changes to the existing code is far preferable to picking a new tool and starting over from scratch.
Unfortunately, Lex Li was absolutely correct, and of course, the link to the reason why is posted on a site my company considers off limits, thus never showed up in my google searches prior to coding this out.
None of the tools I tried were able to handle the form I was trying to automate either -- I needed to fill in named fields and check/uncheck checkboxes, abilities which seemed beyond (or terribly convoluted in) the tools I evaluated ...
Eventually I dug into the document.xml format myself; I developed a function to modify the XML to check a named checkbox, and manipulated the raw document.xml to replace text fields with *-delimited token names. This reduced all of the necessary changes to simple string manipulation -- the rest was trivial.
The tool is 100% home-grown, not dependent upon any non-System libraries and works 100% for this particular form. It is not a generic solution by any stretch, and I suspect the document.xml file will need manual changes if and when the document is ever revised.
But for this particular problem -- it is a solution.
This was the closest I got to a complicated part. This function will check (but not uncheck) a named checkbox from a document.xml if the given condition is true.
Private Shared Function markCheckbox(xmlString As String, cbName As String, checkValue As Boolean) As String
markCheckbox = xmlString
If checkValue Then ' Checkbox needs to be checked, proceed
Dim pos As Integer = markCheckbox.IndexOf("<w:ffData><w:name w:val=""" & cbName & """/>")
If pos > -1 Then ' We have a checkbox
Dim endPos As Integer = markCheckbox.IndexOf("</w:ffData>", pos+1)
Dim cbEnd As Integer = markCheckbox.IndexOf("</w:checkBox>", pos+1)
If endPos > cbEnd AndAlso cbEnd > -1 Then ' Have found the appropriate w:ffData element (pos -> endPos) and the included insert point (cbEnd)
markCheckbox = markCheckbox.Substring(0, cbEnd) & "<w:checked/>" & markCheckbox.Substring(cbEnd)
End If
' Any other logic conditions, return the original XML string unmangled.
End If
End If
End Function
I am looking to disable Save As in a Word 2010 file but still allow save. In other words I want users to be able to update the existing file but not create copies. I realize that this is impossible to truly do for people who know workarounds but for the general user I have successfully done this in Excel but am pretty new to word VBA.
When I add the following to a brand new document everything works as intended:
Sub FileSaveAs()
MsgBox "Copies of this file cannot be created. Please save changes in the original document." & _
, , "Copy Cannot be Created"
End Sub
My document has other macros for various command buttons but none of them involve saving the document (under original name or save as). There is also a macro running on open but that is 1 line going to a bookmark. When I try to "save as" in this document I get the message box as intended. When I try to "save" though things get strange: I get the save as dialogue (problem 1). Whether I try to save either under same name or other name the dialogue behaves as it normally would except it doesn't save and the dialogue box opens again automatically essentially creating an endless loop until I hit cancel (problem 2). I also intermittently get a "disk is full" warning pop-up after trying to save which I can dismiss but appears a few minutes later as long as he file is open (perhaps related to autosave?)
Since the macro works in the test file I assumed this strange behavior must be something elsewhere in my code but my document with the other macros saves normally as long as I don't include the save as code above so now I'm totally confused. Before I put up the rest of my code which is lengthy and for the reasons stated above I would not think impact things, I figured I'd ask this:
1. Is there any place other than my other command button macros that could be causing this behavior?
2. Is there a better method people recommend to achieve my ultimate goal of disabling save as but not save?
Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.
The Word application has a DocumentBeforeSave event. To enable application events I suggest to create a class module by the name of ThisApplication and paste the following code into it.
Option Explicit
Private WithEvents App As Application
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
Set App = Word.Application
End Sub
Private Sub App_DocumentBeforeSave(ByVal Doc As Document, _
SaveAsUI As Boolean, _
Cancel As Boolean)
If SaveAsUI Then
MsgBox "Please always use the ""Save"" command" & vbCr & _
"to save this file.", _
vbExclamation, "SaveAs is not allowed"
Cancel = True
End If
End Sub
Add the following code to your ThisDocument module.
Dim WdApp As ThisApplication
Private Sub Document_Open()
Set WdApp = New ThisApplication
End Sub
You may add the Set App = ... line to your existing Document_Open procedure. After the WdApp variable has been initialised all application events will be received by the ThisApplication class where the DocumentBeforeSave event procedure is programmed not to allow SaveAs.
Of course, this is a blanket refusal for all documents. Therefore you may wish to add code to the procedure to limit the restriction to certain documents only. The proc receives the entire document object with all its properties, including Name, Path, FullName and built-in as well as custom properties. You can identify the files you wish to be affected by any of these.
Note that the WdApp variable will be erased in case of a program crash. If this happens the application events will no longer fire. It may be useful to know that application events occur before document events. This is if you wish to use the application's DocumentOpen event as well as or instead of the document's Document_Open event.
So I have tons of data in my workbook that I need to pass on to my users in a way that allows them to interact with the workbook..., but also limits what they can actually do. So I have made it so they can access certain pages to Add needed data, then I've given access to a menu page so they can run a report.
This report I have found is best if it's an html page.
To that end, I have tried several different ways, save as...and publish. I like the publish version, but I can not for the life of me get this working. All the samples I see, appear to be the same. Here is the line of code in question:
ActiveWorkbook.PublishObjects.Add(xlSourceSheet, ActiveWorkbook.Path & ".htm, "Sheet1", "", xlHtmlStatic, "", "Report Title").Publish True
Every time I get a run time error '1004':
Method 'Publish' of object 'PublishObject' failed
I have the above line of code in a sub, am I missing something? Do I need to set up the publish differently? Thanks for any ideas.
I have had a similar mysterious problem that sometimes it (.Publish) works and sometimes it doesn't, when I try publish.
However, I think the problem might be, in cases when it doesn't work right off the bat, to first save the relevant region as a webpage so that it exists already on the server. After that region has been saved at least once (manually or else maybe with .SaveAs .. see below), then the publish might work.
Here is an example of how I get this to work more consistently, something to convey the structure that works for me:
wkb=ActiveWorkbook.Name 'save wb for later access
url="http://a.com/b.htm" 'save to Internet
sheetname="c"
Sheets(sheetname).Range("d1:e2").Select 'activating sheet may be necessary
On Error Resume Next 'anticipate error to handle it
'Now comes the publish line the first time... which may work.. or not
ActiveWorkbook.PublishObjects.Add(xlSourceRange,url,sheetname,"d1:e2",xlHtmlStatic,"blah","moreblah").Publish (True) 'may fail to create page on website if page didn't already exist
theerr=Err.Number
On Error GoTo 0 'back to default error handling (none)
If theerr <> 0 Then 'if here perhaps because page nonexistent
'msgbox "maybe add warning here [FYI]"
Sheets("dummysheetwithlittleornodata").Copy 'will create workbook
On Error Resume Next
ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs url 'may fail to create webpage first time
ActiveWorkbook.saveAs url 'twice needed for some reason sometimes. [works for me]
On Error GoTo 0
'with fresh dummy html page created, now publish should hopefully work.. let's try again
ActiveWorkbook.Close savechanges:=False 'clean up and avoid popup
Workbooks(wkb).Activate 'get back to correct wkb
Sheets(sheetname).Range("d1:e2").Select
ActiveWorkbook.PublishObjects.Add(xlSourceRange,url,sheetname,"d1:e2",xlHtmlStatic,"blah","moreblah").Publish (True) 'hopefully if failed first time, now it succeeded ! good luck.
End If
The above code structure has allowed me to solve several publish problems I was having. All the techniques together have been enough so far to allow me to save a range from a sheet as a webpage (to server I have write access to) without having to do anything manually (like a manual save or even click on popup). Good Luck.
[The different non-obvious techniques include activating a range before trying a range publish, using the error handling approach and anticipating failure at certain points, the 2x saveas to compensate for mysterious inconsistent failures when using one saveas only, closing and getting back to original workbook cleanly, and using saveas to "guarantee" page exists in form that will make publish to succeed more consistently.]
I have a program which loads data from text files contained in directories back into text boxes on the user interface.
What I want to achieve is:
if the user changes a text of one of the text boxes and then clicks an "Update" button, the old record and its holding directory should be deleted the new record, saved in a new directory.
The code I am using now is:
Dim dtl = New DirectoryInfo(Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop), "Cake Orders\" & TextBox1.Text))
'Delete the culled record
Try
If Directory.Exists(dtl.FullName) Then
Dim oDirectory As New DirectoryInfo(dtl.FullName)
If oDirectory.GetFiles.Count > 0 Then
For Each oFile As FileInfo In oDirectory.GetFiles
oFile.Delete()
Next
End If
If oDirectory.GetDirectories.Count > 0 Then
For Each oDir As DirectoryInfo In oDirectory.GetDirectories
oDir.Delete(True)
Next
dtl.Delete()
End If
End If
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox(ex.Message)
End Try
'Continue to save the updated record
The above code just saves the current data in a new directory (which is fine), but does not delete the original directory like I want it to; that is to say that my code is not executing the above delete routine.
How can I achieve my objective? I am using Visual Basic 2010 Express. Thank you.
What I would suggest is that you find a way to walk around your problem, to get your program to do what you want it to.
Granted, some may provide you with some more advanced, Einstein-esque codes that will do what you want and by all means, I would encourage you try them out. In the meantime, why not consider this approach?
During the cull event when you load data from the root directory, why not save the name of your sub-directory to a redundant textbox so that your delete routine can ‘see’ it and execute the delete routine before the rest of your code, which you say works fine, runs?
This is to say:
Dim dtl = New DirectoryInfo(Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop), "Cake Orders\" & RedundantTextbox.Text))
Surely, you would not be charged with finding a cheeky way to avoid being eaten alive by software programming which sometimes can be a brain-eating dinosaur.