Excel itself will not close; needs to be killed from Task Manager

[nigelh]

I have an Excel based application which loads an Add-in when the control spreadsheet is opened, and then when the user has completed the task, unloads the Add-in as part of the Workbook_Before Close process. The control spreadsheet is closed by clicking the "X" button on the workbook window (not the overall Excel window). The add-in appears to unload correctly, and the control spreadsheet disappears. However, I have now run into a situation where I cannot close Excel itself. Clicking the "X" button elicits a "Not Responding" message, and I have to resort to using the Task Manager to kill the process. This also takes a number of attempts to actually kill the process. The only clue I have is that sometimes, when I restart Excel (2003, by the way), I get a message about a serious problem with the Add-in and do I want to disable them. The Add-in is loaded from a network drive, as is the control spreadsheet.

This is totally new behaviour to me: I thought at first that it might be related to using a version of the Add-in that was modified in Excel 2010 (but not using the .xlam extension), but I think this is a red herring, as the behaviour still occurs with a version of the Add-in modified and stored from Excel 2003.

Any ideasa would be greatly appreciated

 

[brettdj]

Are you automating Excel in this application?

If so you should explicity declare your references
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/vba/xl_doesnt_quit/

Cheers

Dave

 

[nigelh]

Mmmm... Thanks for the link, Dave. I need to check the code, but basically the user starts Excel from the Start menu, or from a shortcut. The application does open a number of files, and there are unqualified references to cells and ranges - but always within the context of first activating the relevant workbook. These workbooks are then closed before the final close. All range names are (I think) defined in terms of a specific workbook, but that may be where an issue lies

Part of my puzzle is that this phenomenon only appears at one particular site - I guess I need to do a code diff to see if there are any differences between installations that could point highlight the problem

Thanks
Nigel