CODEWITHSUNDEEP
blueprismrpa
Michael Bailey
Michael Bailey

Reputation: 21

Blue Prism Excel VBO Given key not in dictionary error

I have two processes that operate on a single Excel file.

The first process creates the Excel instance and opens/creates and activates a workbook and worksheet. The second process makes entries to the spreadsheet. The first process passes the Excel handle as an output parameter to the second process but, when the second process attempts to interact with the workbook, a "Given key not in dictionary" error occurs.

I speculate that the handle is just a means for a process to distinguish between Excel instances to which it is connected and the second process needs to connect to the Excel instance opened by the first process. The Excel VBO contains Attach and Attach Worksheet pages that may provide this functionality, but I cannot find any instructions or documentation for the Excel VBO. There may be more than one Excel instance open and I'm not sure how to refer to the correct instance.

Is my assumption that I need to connect the second process to the Excel instance opened by the first process correct? If so, how do I do this? If not, can anyone tell me what causes the dictionary error and how I can address it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 8910

Answers (1)

esqew
esqew

Reputation: 44710

handles are kept track of internally in memory by a particular instance of the MS Excel VBO. They are not shared between instances of the VBO.

Given the above, and assuming your code is set up exactly as you've described (two distinct processes), this is expected behavior: the instance of the MS Excel VBO that holds the handle for the instance of Excel you're attempting to interact with is purged from memory at the end of the process.

Regarding the "Attach" functionality and associated documentation: most all out-of-the-box VBOs do have documentation available, and is always accessible by clicking the "i" button as emphasized in my screenshot below:

Blue Prism action configuration

Clicking this pops an Internet Explorer window with the documentation for the particular object you have set in the "Business Object" field of this window. In this case, the MS Excel VBO action "Attach" has the following description:

1.3 Attach

Back-compatible link to 'Open Instance'. This opens the first running instance of Excel found and links to it in this object. Returns:
- handle : Number : An integer with which the instance opened can be identified.
- Enable Events : Flag : Indicates that events should be enabled / disabled on the attached instance - defaulted to True

In your particular use case, this may be a viable action. In most cases/designs (esp. including considerations for resiliency), it should be considered that the automated solution may inadvertently attach to another Excel instance (if one is present). As such, you might want to consider re-factoring your process design to create and interact with the Excel instance within the same Blue Prism process. If you need logical separation of the code that launches Excel & handles the processing, you might consider using individual Pages and page references as opposed to separate processes altogether.

The last point above lends nicely to your assumption regarding the use of handle. At the risk of being redundant: your assumption itself is correct, but you might want to consider a slight re-design to your processes. It's unlikely that the optimal design of a given Blue Prism process would open an instance of Excel in one process, and not interact with it until another process.

Upvotes: 2

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