I have a script where I use win32com to interact with a COM service. It works as intended when the program is already open. I connect to it using win32com.client.dynamic.Dispatch, then interact with a document that should already be open. Assuming the program is already open, I can easily check if a document is open, but I'm not sure how to check if the program is already open or not. When I use the Dispatch mentioned, it just starts the program if it isn't already open, which is not what I want.
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1 Answer
try win32com.client.GetActiveObject() method. This is what I use in some convenience functions I've written, this one for Excel:
def Excel(visible=True):
'''Get running Excel instance if possible, else
return new instance.
'''
try:
excel = win32com.client.GetActiveObject("Excel.Application")
print("Running Excel instance found, returning object")
except:
excel = new_Excel(visible=visible)
print("No running Excel instances, returning new instance")
else:
if not excel.Workbooks.Count:
excel.Workbooks.Add(1)
excel.Visible = visible
return excel
new_Excel is just another convenience function for opening new instances of the Excel application object.
2 Comments
Frak
How would you handle the case when Excel isn't installed? If I use
excel = win32.Dispatch('excel.application'), it crashes if Excel isn't installed: pywintypes.com_error: (-2147221005, 'Invalid class string', None, None) How do I gracefully check first before trying to send the Dispatch?
