David
I use this to open an Excel sheet after a reference in created:

   oExcel.WorkBooks.WorkSheet.Open(oXLSFile)
   oExcel.Visible=.t.
   release oExcel

HTH
Terry


>Tamar,
>
>I think you've hit it... I looked and according to the NT taskman excel is still in memory. I shutdown the VFP instance, but Excel still remained in memory. I killed it from taskman and then the sheet opens fine. Am I not doing something to get Excel to unload when I'm done with it?
>
>local loExcel
>
>loExcel = createobject( "excel.application" )
>loExcel.Visible = .t.
>
>... do stuff
>
>loExcel.Quit()
>
>loExcel = .null.
>
>Well the above code works ok, Excel terminates from memory.. looks like I've got a dangling object ref in the other code... I'll go ferret it out.
>
>Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
>
>>I wonder if there's an issue with Excel still holding a lock on the file in some way. I haven't run into this so much with Excel, but I've had a number of cases with Word where I can't do what I want with a file because Word's still holding onto it.