I haven’t programmed in LabVIEW for a while and need a quick refresher. In my VI, users browse to a file on their local C:\ drive or OneDrive to retrieve its path. The file will always be an Excel file (usually .xlsx, sometimes .xls). If the selected file is already open (via the File Express VI), Windows will display a message saying the file is in use—which makes sense, because that’s likely the file they intend to use. Is there a way to let users browse to the file and suppress this message if the file is already open? Or is there a better approach? The goal is to get an Excel Object that I can pass around so I can use other Excel VIs within the Report Generation Toolkit.

Aha! Found a workaround. Looks like the OpenFileDialog() in Windows is to blame. I'm not sure why this happens, but if you manually call OpenFileDialog() using the dll and set "ValidateNames" to False, it works: Wrap this up in your own subVI and you should be good to go. Unfortunately this does make it not cross-platform but given that you're talking about OneDrive I doubt that's a problem for you. (You can also set "ShowReadOnly" but that dramatically changes the appearance of the dialog box. There may be other options that fix this.)

LabVIEW

Check if a File is Open using the File Express VI

Solved!

Hah, no sweat. Glad I got to learn something new. Make sure you mark it as a solution though, as when I was googling this I couldn't find ANY solutions- LabVIEW or otherwise. There's no way you're the only person having this problem 🙂

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LabVIEW

Check if a File is Open using the File Express VI

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