mmittiga17 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks, I have come across an excel spreadsheet that will not allow me to surpress Alerts. Normally this is not a problem. When I try to save out put and close book I get prompted to save changes. This never happens when using: 

Excel->{DisplayAlerts} = 0;

I still get:
---------------------------
Microsoft Excel
---------------------------
A file named 'C:/lab/msd\H38C85441.txt' already exists in this locatio
+n. Do you want to replace it?
---------------------------
Yes   No   Cancel   
---------------------------




#use strict;
use Getopt::Std;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
use Cwd;
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3; # die on errors...
my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject
('Excel.Application') || Win32::OLE->new
('Excel.Application', 'Quit');
$Excel->{'Visible'} = 0;        #0 is hidden, 1 is visible
$Excel->{DisplayAlerts} = "False";    #0 is hide alerts

# application or open new
opendir DIR , '.' or die "Could not open current dir: $!\n";
my @FilePattern = grep(/RTM001XLS/i, readdir DIR);
closedir DIR;

my $x="";

foreach $x (@FilePattern) {
my $file = $x;
my $out = (split(/\./,$file))[0];

print "in $file\n";
print "out $out\n";
my $dir = getcwd();

 
my $book = $dir . "\\" . $file;
my $new =  $dir . "\\" . $out .".txt";
   
my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open({FileName =>$book, ReadOnly => 1});
+ # open Excel file
my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets(3);
$Sheet->Activate();



$Book->SaveAs({Filename => $new,
              FileFormat => xlText});
$Book->Close;
$Excel->Quit();
#rename($file, "Original\\" . $file);
}

[download]
Anythoughts??? The only difference I know of between this and other XLS files I parse is this set of XLS files contain macros. Thanks in advance!!!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Another Excel-OLE Question
by marto (Cardinal) on Jan 08, 2010 at 17:03 UTC

    It's $Excel->Application->{DisplayAlerts} = 0;.

    Martin

[reply]
[d/l]
      Strange, keeps asking me if I want to save changes. alerts=0 should work.
[reply]

        I don't have Microsoft office at home, and only use Microsoft Windows at home for Steam. At work I threw together a quick example based on yours, something like:

        #!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';

$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3; # die on errors...
my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject
('Excel.Application') || Win32::OLE->new
('Excel.Application', 'Quit');
$Excel->{'Visible'} = 1;        #0 is hidden, 1 is visible
$Excel->Application->{DisplayAlerts} = 0;    #0 is hide alerts

my $book = "c:\\input.xls";
my $new = "c:\\output.txt";
   
my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open({FileName =>$book, ReadOnly => 1});

# open Excel file
my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets(3);
$Sheet->Activate();

$Book->SaveAs({Filename => $new, FileFormat => xlText});
$Book->Close;
$Excel->Quit();

        [download]

        Prior to running the script I populated c:\output.txt with "This is a test", and sheet three of the Excel workbook with "boohya!". After running the script the contents of c:\output.txt read "boohya!". For testing purposes I'm pretty sure I left Excel visible.

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Another Excel-OLE Question
by Ratazong (Monsignor) on Jan 08, 2010 at 16:43 UTC

    Try deleting the file (from your perl script) before writing to it from Excel... that way there is no need for Excel to bother you with a dialog.

    Rata (knowing that this is just a workaround ... but sometimes workarounds are as good as solutions ;-)

[reply]
      I have tried deleting files before running script. I still get prompted "do you want to same file.txt" even if it does not exist. Thanks!!!
[reply]

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