Question

Determine wether Excel can execute macros

Asked by: Guy2

Hi,

I have created a dotNet addin for Excel 2003 and 2007.
This addin has to call VBA macros contained in my Excel workbooks. However, in some cases, macros cannot be executed in Excel environment (security level set to 'high', macro disabled when opening the workbook...). In this situation, exceptions are thrown in my dotNet code when calling a VBA macro.

How can I detect if macros can be excecuted when the workbook activate event is fired and handle when the user allow/disallow macros executions?

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Asked On
2009-06-18 at 05:52:00ID24502227
Tags

Excel

Topics

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software

,

Microsoft Visual Basic.Net

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: chris_bottomleyPosted on 2009-06-18 at 06:10:46ID: 24657000

>>> How can I detect if macros can be excecuted when the workbook activate event is fired and handle when the user allow/disallow macros executions?

Basically you can't as by nature the macros are disabled and therefore there is no means to interrogate excel.  I would expect that you need to implement your error handling to handle the exception.

Chris

 

by: Guy2Posted on 2009-06-18 at 06:33:37ID: 24657217

Hi Chris and thanks for the answer.

You are right, macros cannot be executed when they are disabled, but the dotNet instantiated Excel objects are still valid, so my question was :
Are their any means, with all available Excel objects in my dotNet addin (not by calling a macro), to know whether macro can be executed or not?

A possible solution will be to call a macro and catch the "Macro disabled" exception (H800A03EC), but I think that checking an Excel object property will be more convenient.

Thanks anyway.

 

by: chris_bottomleyPosted on 2009-06-18 at 09:59:57ID: 24659394

As I said I believe the answer is no, any objects are static and there is no parameter capable of returning the status of security without using a macro to do so.

It does you no harm though to leave the question open as perhaps someone has found something, I have however earlier searched t'interweb and couldn't find anything.

Chris

 

by: Guy2Posted on 2009-06-19 at 02:01:46ID: 24664768

Thanks Chris.

Concerning the macro security level status, you could read the registry to check if macro are automatically enabled. But this approach does not tell that the current opened Excel instance can execute macros (the user have maybe disabled them).

To check for the possibility to execute macro, I've read somewhere that we could get the state of some command bar controls or use a "toggleDesignMode" property on the dotNet interop interface, but I did not find such property.

I'm still open to any suggestions.

 

by: chris_bottomleyPosted on 2009-06-19 at 02:16:19ID: 24664831

>>> To check for the possibility to execute macro, I've read somewhere that we could get the state of some command bar controls

Perhaps using the sendkeys method you could trigger the menu but that wouldn't return the value though it would potentially allow you to change it ... IF sendkeys is supported when VBA is disabled.

Chris

 

by: chris_bottomleyPosted on 2009-07-27 at 08:25:35ID: 24952554

The answer is it can't be done and as such in my opinion the answer (24657000) meets the criteria for acceptance, i.e. just because the answer is no doesn't justify deletion of the question.

Chris

 

by: Guy2Posted on 2009-07-28 at 01:43:15ID: 24958826

Hi Chris.

I'm not agree with you: the question was: are there any means to detect whether a macro can be executed before we call it (workbook activate event) and you tell me that:
- we must call a macro to check if their are enabled
- "there is no means to interrogate excel" although the Excel interop objects can be accessed whether or not macro are enabled.

So I think your answer was inaccurate and even false for the second point.
But basically, your are right, the answer is no, it can't be done in an easy way (or such way was not found yet...)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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