how to kill orphaned winword.exe in matlab

Question

Running matlab R2010B on Windows 7 Enterprise

In matlab scripts, I save a bunch of results to a word file and then at the end, close and quit word. The code I use is:

WordFname = ['BatInfoDoc' sprintf('%0.3f',now) '.doc']; % serialnumbered filenames
WordFile = fullfile(pwd,WordFname);
WordApp = actxserver('Word.Application');
WordDoc = WordApp.Documents.Add;
WordDoc.SaveAs2(WordFile);
....
WordApp.Selection.TypeText([title2 title3 title4 title5 title6]);
WordApp.Selection.TypeParagraph;

then finally at the end of the script

WordDoc.Close;
WordApp.Quit;

The problem I have is that through my development process, I often crash the matlab script and wind up leaving orphaned WINWORD.EXE processes, each one of which keeps a lock on the file it had been writing.

Up until now I have been using TaskManager to kill these processes one at a time by hand. Having been developing all morning, I find myself with around 20 files I can't delete because they are locked by about 11 orphaned WINWORD.EXE processes!

My question(s): 1) Is there an elegant way to handle the file writing and saving and closing and so on so I don't lock up files and processes when my script crashes out before I get to the part where I close the file and quit word? 2) Is there an elegant way to determine the bad processes from within matlab script and go through and delete them from within a matlab script? That is, can I code my matlab so it cleans up after itself?

ADDED A FEW MINUTES LATER: By the way, I would prefer NOT to enclose all my code in a big try-catch and then close the windows after I've caught my error. The problem with this is I do like to go to debug mode on error, and caught errors don't bring me to debug mode.

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Use a handle class to delete them automatically.

classdef SafeWord < handle 

  properties(Access=public)
       WordApp;
  end

  methods(Access=public)
    function this = SafeWord(WordApp)
        this.WordApp= WordApp;
    end

   function delete(this)
      this.WordDoc.Close;
      this.WordApp.Quit;
   end
 end
end

And the use case:

  sw = SafeWord(Word.Application());
  WordApplication = sw.WordApp;
 % Do something here

 % When sw ends its lifecycle, it calls delete.

Here is a related question.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '12 at 20:09

2

Straight after you create Wordapp, use c = onCleanup(@()Wordapp.Quit). When your function exits, either naturally or with a crash, c will be deleted and its function will execute, quitting Word. If this is part of a script rather than a function, you can manually delete c to quit.

Also - while developing/debugging, I would set Wordapp.Visible to true so you can manually close word if necessary. Set back to false for production.

answered May 31 '12 at 20:09

Sam Roberts

23,742
1
39
63

1

btw `onCleanup` is implemented very similarly to what @Andrey showed (like C++ smart pointers) – Amro Jun 01 '12 at 10:08
I like both of those suggestions, I had since posting figured out I could make my windows visible and not orphan them that way. – mwengler Jun 01 '12 at 17:26
I am using this! I actually created a non-anonymous clean-up function so I can save the doc, and also delete the wordapp object after quitting it, and close another file I write to in my script. – mwengler Jun 01 '12 at 20:42
1

@mwengler just a suggestion: it's probably not a big deal in your case, but in general it's best to have multiple small cleanup functions rather than one that does several things. You want to minimize the chance that the cleanup function will itself error. To keep things tidy, I store mine in the fields of a `cleaners` struct: so for example `cleaners.Word = ...`, `cleaners.myFile = ...` and so on. – Sam Roberts Jun 02 '12 at 07:45

how to kill orphaned winword.exe in matlab

2 Answers2