Closing Notepad from Excel

[logicada]

In my spreadsheet, a series of macros calls an external program/application three times. Each time the program finishes, it (and not Excel, as I formerly thought) opens a resource (*.res) file in Notepad, which of course goes into the taskbar. Since I need to run the spreadsheet seven or eight times in a row, the taskbar can get cluttered quickly.

The program opens three different instances of the same filename: iroutine.res.

Is there a way to get Excel to close these Notepad files (if it's simpler to do, it can kill all instances of Notepad) when it finishes running its routines? Thanks.

[JBeaucaire]

You'll have to experiment with using the SendKeys call inside your macro. It's tricky to use, basically sending "ketystrokes" into the windows environment. But that's the only method I can think of.

I have used SENDKEYS to open notepad, paste in the contents in memory and save/close notepad.

[royUK]

Try this

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[logicada]

I'm not a programmer. I have only a very basic understanding of VBA.

Do I put all of that code into a new module? How do I call it from the module that calls the various other modules? Thanks.

[royUK]

This runs the close

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If you want to call it as part of another Procedure use

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[logicada]

I put the whole thing into a module (since I don't know what else to do with it). I then put CloseNotepad into the main routine module (which calls all the other sub functions. When I try running the spreadsheet, I get an "Ambiguous name detected" error message, and the debugger opens to CloseNotepad or Call CloseNotepad, which I also tried.

Am I supposed to put all of the code into a module or somewhere else?

[royUK]

Have you put the whole of the CloseNotePad Procedure in both Modules?

[logicada]

You're referring to putting the entire several lines of what you posted into both modules? No, only a new module.

I first tried to paste the entire code into the module that called the various other modules/subroutines. I got a message saying that only comments could appear after End Sub.

Then I tried putting the whole thing into one module and tried calling it from the main module with fCloseApp and CloseNotepad (and with each prefaced by Call). All gave me an ambiguous name error.

What I need to find out is where to put everything. I didn't (and wouldn't know how to) program this spreadsheet; it was done by somebody else many years ago, and I don't know where to find him anymore. It has several modules, all with subroutines. One module calls all of the others.

[royUK]

Can you attach the workbook?

[logicada]

After much trial and error, I managed to solve where to put the code and how to make it work.

I put the entire code into the main module (and not into its own module). That ran the spreadsheet, but an alert sound occurred, and the routine finished itself normally. No Notepad windows closed.

The alert I'd received was Notepad asking me if I wanted to save the changes to an open Notepad file (not one opened by the routine) that hadn't been saved yet.

After saving all text files, I ran the routine again. It closed one instance of Notepad, but not the others.

I then tried adding three consecutive instances of CloseNotepad near the end of the main module (after the three Notepad files had opened to the taskbar). That also only closed one instance of Notepad.

I then tried adding CloseNotepad directly after each subroutine that opened the instance of Notepad. This worked.

The only proviso is that I need to not have any Notepad files open when I run the program, as the routine will only close the first instance it finds. but that's fine with me.

Thanks for the code/routine. It will save me a lot of hassle in the future.

[royUK]

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[logicada]

I finally figured out how to put the Solved tag on.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to rate the answers, other than clicking the scale thing or saying so in the forum.