Instead of trying to predict in advance what Excel can or cannot do, the easy way is to tell Excel to open the file (workbook) and see what Excel has to say about that. Excel will not allow 2 instances to have read/write access to a file simultaneously.

Try to do this via the normal user interface and you will see what Excel would tell a human being and the options presented to the user when the open fails. How the fancy options like "notify me when the other guy closes the file" work via the API, I have no idea. But I'm sure you will get a clear "Hey, this r/w open attempt did not work".

As an update, if there is some super special requirement, I would consider using the Handle Command. This is a free utility download from Microsoft. It can show all sorts of stuff about open handles on the system. You do of course have to be an admin to run this thing which could be a problem? Using API's that talk to the "guts" of XP require higher level permissions than what a user would need to just run Excel.

In reply to Re: Determining if excel workbook is open by Marshall
in thread Determining if excel workbook is open by neutron

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