Sorry to keep asking Q's friends. Maybe one day soon I'll be an automation wizard buit at the moment I'm on the steep bit of the curve.

It's a good idea to close the Excel app after creating and manipulating a w/b or sheet., otherwise Excel.exe remains as a process but only shows up in the Task Manager, and if you try to create another incidence you can get a dispatch error over the contention (something like that anyway).

You create the w/s and open it for the user to inspect

But there are 2 scenarios:

a) the user looks at it and closes, either the workbook (leaving the Excel shell), or Excel proper
b) they look at it and go back to the VFP app window, without closing

In case a), attempting to close Excel, from the VFP code causes an error.
In case b), you can get the above mentioned dispatch error if try to do another export in the same VFP session.

So 'twould be nice to ascertain whether or not an incidence of Excel is running before deciding what to do.

How to do this please?

'ppreciate it

Terry