# Problem with Excel WIN32OLE and Thread

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-excel-win32ole-and-thread/131453>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 10, 2008, 8:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-excel-win32ole-and-thread/131453 "2008-03-10T08:39:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vpdeguz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c4cdca/32.png) [@vpdeguz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vpdeguz)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 8:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-excel-win32ole-and-thread/131453/1 "2008-03-10T08:39:55Z")

</div>

I am trying to kill excel automation process if it has been running for  
more than 15 minutes. The script below is using two threads: thread 1 is  
timer that will sleep for 15 minutes; and thread 2 will run the excel  
automation.The script works fine except when there’s an excel error  
popup dialog box. When this happens, thread 1 fails to kill the excel  
automation process (or it never reach that part of the script).

BTW, is there other way to accomplish this without using Thread.

require ‘win32ole’  
require ‘win32/api’  
include Win32

GetWindowThreadProcessId = API.new(‘GetWindowThreadProcessId’, ‘LP’,‘L’,  
‘user32’)

threads = []  
threads \<\< Thread.new {  
sleep(15\*60) # Sleep for 15 minutes  
Thread.kill threads[1] # Kill excel thread

# Kill Excel process

excel = Thread.current[‘excel’]

excel\_pid = [0].pack(‘L’)  
GetWindowThreadProcessId.call(excel.Hwnd, excel\_pid)  
Process.kill(‘KILL’, excel\_pid.unpack(‘L’)[0])  
}  
threads \<\< Thread.new {

# Start excel automation

excel = WIN32OLE.new(“excel.application”)  
threads[0][‘excel’] = excel

excel[‘Visible’] = FALSE  
workbook = excel.Workbooks.Open(‘C:\scripts\Book1.xls’)  
excel.Run(‘sample1’) # Run Excel macro, may fail and display error  
message box  
excel.Quit()

# Kill timer thread

Thread.kill threads[0]  
}

threads[0].join  
threads[1].join