checking for a running app

[L3Tech]

Is there a way from within an excel macro to check if a program is
running on the computer. I need to check to see if a program is running
(which is not a microsoft program) before I execute some code.

 

[Steve Yandl]

If you know that Excel will be running on a WinXP, Win2k, or some other PC
with WMI installed, you could use WMI to get a list of running processes and
check for the one of interest.

A better solution might be to use Word. Most of the time, a user running
Excel also has Word installed on the same PC. The Word application has a
tasks collection that will let you check for processes that have their own
window. It uses the friendly name that would typically be in the title bar
of the application. For example, I could run this from Excel to check if
the game solitaire was running on the PC.

Sub CheckApps()
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
Set colTasks = objWord.Tasks
If colTasks.Exists("Solitaire") Then
MsgBox "Someone is playing solitaire"
End If
objWord.Quit
End Sub

Steve