How to tell if an Excel 2007 spreadsheet is open and WHO has it open using VBScript

Question

How do I tell if an Excel 2007 spreadsheet is open and WHO has it open using VBScript?

I am trying to figure out whether or not an Excel workbook is currently open b

Answer 1

Have you tried the Workbook.UserStatus property? Here's a code snippet quote from the Excel VBA help:

users = ActiveWorkbook.UserStatus
With Workbooks.Add.Sheets(1)
    For row = 1 To UBound(users, 1)
    .users = ActiveWorkbook.UserStatus
With Workbooks.Add.Sheets(1)
    For row = 1 To UBound(users, 1)
    .Cells(row, 1) = users(row, 1)
    .Cells(row, 2) = users(row, 2)
    Select Case users(row, 3)
        Case 1
            .Cells(row, 3).Value = "Exclusive"
        Case 2
            .Cells(row, 3).Value = "Shared"
    End Select
Next
End With 

Answer 2

My Genious co-workers reminded me about Excel's "lock" file. When opening excel, you create a hidden system file that holds the persons name of who has the file open. A lock file starts with "~$" before the spreadsheet name. Example:

If you have a spreadsheet called testWorkbook.xlsx it's lock file would be ~$testWorkbook.xlsx located in the same directory.

This is also a faster and easier method to checking if the file is open because your not actually opening the file like I was doing before. Now I am just checking if the lock file exists and if it does, I check who is the "owner" of the lock file and that will be the person who currently have the spreadsheet open. Hopefully this will help someone out in the future!

This is my code that works flawlessly:

testWorkbookLockFile = "I:\~$test_workbook.xlsx"
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

If objFSO.FileExists(testWorkbookLockFile) Then
    WScript.Echo "The file is locked by " & GetFileOwner(testWorkbookLockFile)
Else
    WScript.Echo "The file is available"
End If

Function GetFileOwner(strFileName)
    'http://www.vbsedit.com/scripts/security/ownership/scr_1386.asp
    Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:")
    Set objFileSecuritySettings = _
    objWMIService.Get("Win32_LogicalFileSecuritySetting='" & strFileName & "'")
    intRetVal = objFileSecuritySettings.GetSecurityDescriptor(objSD)

    If intRetVal = 0 Then
       GetFileOwner = objSD.Owner.Name
    Else
       GetFileOwner = "Unknown"
    End If
End Function

I want to point out that I did not write the GetFileOwner Function guts. I linked to the website where I got that code in the function.

Also, if you don't have the location mapped to the spreadsheet and it is over the network, a UNC path will not work, you have to map a drive. This can be done using the following 2 lines of code:

Set objNetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive "Z:", "\\Server1\Share1"

Hopefully someone will benefit from this. I know there isn't much information about how to do this on the web since I have been searching forever for it!