Python win32com Excel.Application throws error if cursor is in a cell when 'visible' is set to False

Question

Thanks in advance for your help/advice.

I'm trying to create a program that uses tkinter as a GUI to gather information, then uses win32com to send that information to an existing Excel file. On my Tk window, I have a button which toggles the visibility of the excel file, using the 'visible' attribute of the Com object. It works fine, unless the cursor is still active inside a cell when you attempt to hide the file again (set 'visible' to False). When I do this, it throws an AttributeError. Is there any workaround?

Here is the code I'm using as the command for my button:

    def buttonShow(XL):
        XL.visible ^= 1

Edit: This was suggested as a previous answer, but the question and solutions are in C#, whereas I required a solution in Python. The problems are similar, but I believe the solution I found in Python is simpler anyway.

Answer 1

I found an effective solution. By checking the Application.Ready attribute you can determine if the excel file is in edit mode. Unfortunately, if the file is in edit mode, this still throws an error. I was able to work around by using a try statement to query, and catching the pywintypes.com_error exception.

I simply edited my code by adding a new function to check the status:

from pywintypes import com_error

def isReady(XL):
    try: return XL.Ready
    except com_error: return False

def buttonShow(XL):
    if isReady(XL):
        XL.Visible ^= 1

This seems to work. Now, if the excel application is still in edit mode, the button simply does nothing. If the excel application is not in edit mode, it works as expected and toggles the visibility.