Any uipath activity to check Excel/Access application status to see if Macro is still running or completed?

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1

Hey guys

Any pointers for whats the best way to verify if the macros in excel/access have already completed?

For excel, we are using Find element to see if status at the bottom of the excel window is “Ready”. This seems to work for smaller macros.
But the issue is for longer running macros, “Ready” status would come up for a split second every now and then, the bot would pick it up and think that the macro has finished running.

Is there a way to somehow check application status?
Is uipath planning to upgrade the existing “execute macro” activity so that the activity is finished only when macro is finished running?

2

Hey, not sure if this would work but could you have a step at the end your excel macro that updates a specific cell/sheet with a keyword, such as “complete” and then you can check that cell every so often to see if it has been updated.

3

Apart from updating any cell in excel…I can suggest one more activity…
just try to identify any (Blank) cell/ or column where the final value gets update…at last run of macro
use your bot to identify that cell value and do next activity accordingly.

Regards,
GS

4

Hi Cona and Govind
Thanks for your responses.
Unfortunately that will be the change on macro level. With the organisation of our size there will be a number of processes that use hundreds of macros ranging in complexities, which also sit in various business units. So practically it is not very feasible to have all macros update one cell at the end of the macro process.

Though we can consider this for smaller processes. So thanks for your suggestion.

However, i was looking to have a more concrete way of finding out whether application is busy running macro or not. Not sure if this is something in uipath pipeline for future enhancement.

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5

hello everyone! Any solution for the above? it is similar to our case.

6

Hi @Kemp

Although I cannot offer a direct solution, I did add the suggestion from above to our tracker for our team to consider. The ideas added:

  • Execute Macro to return a boolean upon end of execution
  • Execute Macro to have a timeout property
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7

Have a look at the Invoke VBScript activity. If the design for that one solves your issues, we will see if we can bring the same functionality into the Excel Macro activity too.

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