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.Diagnost ics.Process.Pri orityClass seems to be appropriate for this.
"Bob" <bs********@yah oo.comwrote in message
news:c2******** *************** ***********@w1g 2000prk.googleg roups.com...

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

[Bob]

On Sep 6, 7:47*am, "Family Tree Mike"
<FamilyTreeM... @ThisOldHouse.c omwrote:

I've never had need to try this, but
System.Diagnost ics.Process.Pri orityClass seems to be appropriate for this..

"Bob" <bshumsk...@yah oo.comwrote in message

news:c2******** *************** ***********@w1g 2000prk.googleg roups.com...

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

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
SetForegroundWi ndow,
http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/...regroundWindow.

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...

"Bob" <bs********@yah oo.comwrote in message
news:22******** *************** ***********@n38 g2000prl.google groups.com...
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("user 32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(Unman agedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SetForegroundWi ndow(IntPtr hWnd);

void b1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{


Process[] allProcesses=Pr ocess.GetProces ses();
for (int i = 0; i < allProcesses.Le ngth; i++)
{
if (allProcesses[i].ProcessName.Co ntains("EXCEL") ){
excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].Handle;
excelProc = allProcesses[i];
}
}

SetForegroundWi ndow(excelHndl) ;
}
Thanks Again,
Bob

[Family Tree Mike]

Close... This line:

excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].Handle;

should be:

excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].MainWindowHand le;

"Bob" <bs********@yah oo.comwrote in message
news:8c******** *************** ***********@b30 g2000prf.google groups.com...

>
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("user 32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(Unman agedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SetForegroundWi ndow(IntPtr hWnd);

void b1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{


Process[] allProcesses=Pr ocess.GetProces ses();
for (int i = 0; i < allProcesses.Le ngth; i++)
{
if (allProcesses[i].ProcessName.Co ntains("EXCEL") ){
excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].Handle;
excelProc = allProcesses[i];
}
}

SetForegroundWi ndow(excelHndl) ;
}
Thanks Again,
Bob

[Bob]

On Sep 6, 9:41*pm, "Family Tree Mike"
<FamilyTreeM... @ThisOldHouse.c omwrote:

Close... *This line:

* excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].Handle;

should be:

* excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].MainWindowHand le;

"Bob" <bshumsk...@yah oo.comwrote in message

news:8c******** *************** ***********@b30 g2000prf.google groups.com...

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("user 32.dll")]
* * * [return: MarshalAs(Unman agedType.Bool)]
* * * static extern bool SetForegroundWi ndow(IntPtr hWnd);

* * * void b1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
* * * {

* * * * * Process[] allProcesses=Pr ocess.GetProces ses();
* * * * * * for (int i = 0; i < allProcesses.Le ngth; i++)
* * * * * {
* * * * * *if * (allProcesses[i].ProcessName.Co ntains("EXCEL") ){
* * * * * * * * * excelHndl=allPr ocesses[i].Handle;
* * * * * * * * * excelProc = allProcesses[i];
* * * * * * * }
* * * * * }

* * * * * SetForegroundWi ndow(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.