MS Excel - Open Workbook gets stuck without throwing an Exception

[Anonymous]

Hi, I've encountered an issue that sometimes (ca. 2/100 cases) the process gets stuck in Open Workbook action. It just stays there (for hours) without throwing exception. The previous action before Open Workbook is always Create Instance. I've tried also action Open Instance, but the issue persists. The machine does not crash of freeze or anything and if I just open Task Manager and end EXCEL.exe process, the retry logic allows the process to continue normally. Do you know what might be the cause and maybe the resolution for this issue? If not, do you know if it would be possible to get Open Workbook to throw an exception when encountering this. In that case the retry logic would take care of going forward. I've managed to reduce the cases by adding wait stage before Open Workbook action, but that does not feel like a proper solution. Best Regards, Johan

[Denis__Dennehy]

It sounds like an issue getting a response to an API call to Excel. I recommend killing any open existing excel instances before each new run (Excel is notorious for leaving old processes hanging around) - you can use one of the environment utility objects for that. Also, ensure you are correctly creating and closing Excel instances each time. Any kind of pop-up in the Excel application may cause an issue so check the files where the issue occurs to ensure there is nothing like that occuring.

[BjörnGranacher1]

Hi Johan, did you finally find a solution for this? we are encountering similar issues with Excel (see forum post https://portal.blueprism.com/critical-problem-excel-crashing-microsoft-…) Exactly the point that we do not get an exception in BP which we could handle is a problem for automation. We are runnign extensive test scenarios to narrow down the issue as we are not yet sure if the solution can / has to be: 1. our platform / Excel configuration 2. BP MS Excel VBO 3. design in the script (but difficult when we do not get an exception) Regards Bjorn