Excel zombie process on debugging stop from Visual Studio

Question

During app debugging (Visual Studio 2012, C#, Excel COM Interop) I usually stop the app from Visual Studio (exception, or the logic is broken). This leaves started from the app Excel instance to hang in the memory. Yes, I can kill it from the Task Manager, but it is pretty annoying. Is there any way to "customize" dependency between Excel and my app process?

Answer 1

I have a Powershell function defined in my profile (C:\Users\{userName}\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1)

function Kill-Excel {
    $excelInstances = @(Get-Process | Where { $_.Name -Eq "Excel" }).Count
    if ($excelInstances -Eq 0) {
        "Excel not running"
    }
    else {
        if ($excelInstances -Eq 1) {
            "Killing 1 instance of Excel"
        }
        else {
            "Killing $excelInstances instances of Excel"
        }
        Get-Process | Where { $_.Name -Eq "Excel" } | Kill
    }
}

Then I just type Kill-Excel in a Powershell prompt which kills all Excel instances, hidden and visible, on my machine.

Note that this will take down any Excel instances you have open without prompting to save.