>In every system I've ever used that did this, just releasing the variable leaves an instance of Excel running in Task Manager. Try doing several of these in a row and see what happens.


hmmm, i tried the following and it ereleases every instance:

oleexcel = CREATEOBJECT("Excel.application")
oleexcel1 = CREATEOBJECT("Excel.application")
oleexcel2 = CREATEOBJECT("Excel.application")
oleexcel3 = CREATEOBJECT("Excel.application")
release ;
   oleexcel, ;
   oleexcel1, ;
   oleexcel2, ;
   oleexcel3