increasing Excel process place in taskmanager hierarchy

[Bob]

Hi,
I have an application that uses a excel in conjuction with a third
party application. I create an excel instance in c# and mark it as
invisible. The third party application is programmed to interact with
excel and everything works fine as I monitor interactions with my
hidden excel sheet. The problem comes if a user opens another
instance of excel. Is there any way that I can use the process
classes or another means to increase my invisible excel's task-
manager priority to be above every other excel instance? Making my
Excel application visible and then invisible temporarily makes it most
recent one but it creates a flickering and is likely resource
intensive.

Thanks,
Bob

 

[Family Tree Mike]

I've never had need to try this, but
System.Diagnostics.Process.PriorityClass seems to be appropriate for this.

 

[Bob]

I've never had need to try this, but
System.Diagnostics.Process.PriorityClass seems to be appropriate for this..

I don't think that is the right solution. It throws an exception when
I try to change the priority either in C# or manually in task
manager. More generally, I am not trying to increase the programs
processor priority (ie how fast it executes), but rather just make
sure it is the top excel instance in visibility. Does a process with
higher priority show higher in visibility?

 

[Family Tree Mike]

That is a different question than you asked before in my opinion...

The solution will likely involve FindWindow,
http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32.FindWindow, and
SetForegroundWindow,
http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32.SetForegroundWindow.

Now, the tricky part which I cannot answer, is how are you going to know
when to execute the code? I mean, that if you put in a timer and check if a
process of Excel exists, then you will be constantly moving Excel to the
front. This would be annoying as a user.

Then there is also the condition where there are more than one Excel
window...

I don't think that is the right solution. It throws an exception when
I try to change the priority either in C# or manually in task
manager. More generally, I am not trying to increase the programs
processor priority (ie how fast it executes), but rather just make
sure it is the top excel instance in visibility. Does a process with
higher priority show higher in visibility?

 

[Bob]

Thanks for your response, sorry if my question was unclear. Is this
the correct way to implement your suggestion, I am not used to
PInvoke. If it is correct, it doesn't seem to work.

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);

void b1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{




Process[] allProcesses=Process.GetProcesses();
for (int i = 0; i < allProcesses.Length; i++)
{
if (allProcesses.ProcessName.Contains("EXCEL")){
excelHndl=allProcesses.Handle;
excelProc = allProcesses;
}
}

SetForegroundWindow(excelHndl);
}
Thanks Again,
Bob

 

[Family Tree Mike]

Close... This line:

excelHndl=allProcesses.Handle;

should be:

excelHndl=allProcesses.MainWindowHandle;

 

[Bob]

Close...  This line:

  excelHndl=allProcesses.Handle;

should be:

  excelHndl=allProcesses.MainWindowHandle;

Thanks for your response, sorry if my question was unclear. Is this
the correct way to implement your suggestion, I am not used to
PInvoke.  If it is correct, it doesn't seem to work.

 [DllImport("user32.dll")]
      [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
      static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);

      void b1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {

          Process[] allProcesses=Process.GetProcesses();
            for (int i = 0; i < allProcesses.Length; i++)
          {
           if   (allProcesses.ProcessName.Contains("EXCEL")){
                  excelHndl=allProcesses.Handle;
                  excelProc = allProcesses;
              }
          }

          SetForegroundWindow(excelHndl);
}
Thanks Again,
Bob

Beautiful, thanks! This seems to work fine as long as I initialize the
excel instance to be visible, get the main window handle then, and
then make it invisible.