>>Humor me :-)
>>
>>Try PUBLIC oExcel rather than LOCAL oExcel.
>
>I would but I'm at home now and trying to do CREATEOBJECT() freezes VFP. However, I do think that I may have figured out the problem, so humor me. Remember that the server is subclassed like this:

DEFINE CLASS ExcelServer AS CUSTOM
>  oServer = NULL
>
>  FUNCTION Init
>
>    This.oServer = CREATEOBJECT('Excel.Application')
>    RETURN NOT ISNULL(This.oServer)
>  ENDFUNC
>  * Methods here
>ENDDEFINE

OK, now using this as the model, create the oExcel via CREATEOBJECT('ExcelServer'). Issue the quit via oxl (or whatever) with oxl.oServer.Quit(), then oxl = NULL. If you check the Task Manager, I'll bet that there's an instance of Excel still hanging around.
>

Excel is gone after oxl = .NULL. (I tested with VFP 5 and VFP 6, Excel 97 under Win 95B). But I was checking in TASKER Manager...
:)