windows schtasks open excel if not open, then open worksheet if not open

Question

I created a task in the Windows 7 schtasks tool. It reminds me on the 15th of the month, by opening an excel workbook that I should look at and update. Handy.

Problem is, there is about a 60% chance I already have Excel open at the time this pops up, and I suppose a small chance I even have that workbook open. Then the result is not at all elegant. The task tries to open another copy of Excel and this complains about read-only access, and likewise with the workbook itself.

Is there a way in SCHTASKS, or in a BATCH file (or any other handy Windows tool you'd recommend) to first check if Excel is open and then if it is, just switch to it, rather than open a second copy of Excel? I've seen a note about using TASKLIST in a .BAT file to check if it is open:

 TASKLIST /FI "IMAGENAME eq EXCEL.EXE" 2>NUL | FIND /I /N "EXCEL.EXE">NUL
 IF "%ERRORLEVEL%" EQ "0" START excel "C:\Project4\MonthlyTracking.xlsx"

but I don't know how to react in the BATCH file if it is open. I don't see a way in a BATCH file to tell the already-running excel process to open a file.

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Instead of trying to start Excel with the file, start just the file:

"C:\Project4\MonthlyTracking.xlsx"

This will open excel, if it is not running with that file, It will open the file within a running excel, and it will give you an error, if it is already open - which you can use:

"C:\Project4\MonthlyTracking.xlsx" 2>nul
if errorlevel neq 0 echo file already opened