Closing a Shell Window through VBA

[goofy78270]

I have a VBA that opens a Shell window to access another application. In an effort to clean it up, I am looking to close this shell window after the VBA is ran. I have looked through google with no luck so any help would be great.

 

[stanleydgromjr]

goofy78270,

Check this out - ShellAndWait - Waiting For A Shelled Process To Complete:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ShellAndWait.htm

Have a great day,
Stan

 

[goofy78270]

goofy78270,

Check this out - ShellAndWait - Waiting For A Shelled Process To Complete:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ShellAndWait.htm

Have a great day,
Stan

This is a great site, but it does not accomplish what I am looking for. I am looking for a way to manually terminate the shell application from the VBA and not implement a wait until the user closes the application which is what this is doing.

It calls the Shell command, Opens the process, and then uses WaitForSingleObject to return when the shell'd program terminates.

 

[goofy78270]

I found a solution. I think this might help others looking to do the same thing so I am posting it.

The code below shows you how to start an application (in this case, notepad) using the Shell statement, and then close it again by sending it the WM_CLOSE message. Please note that not all applications pay an attention to this message! You will have to try it first.


Private Declare Function GetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" () As Long
Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, lParam As Any) As Long

Private Const WM_CLOSE = &H10
Private lNotepadhWnd As Long
Private Sub cmdStartNotepad_Click()
    Call Shell("notepad", vbNormalFocus)
    DoEvents
    lNotepadhWnd = GetForegroundWindow
End Sub

Private Sub cmdCloseNotepad_Click()
    Call SendMessage(lNotepadhWnd, WM_CLOSE, 0, 0)
End Sub

Thanks to James Crowley for this bit of code at http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/146/