C++/VB - How to check whether MS Excel is installed or not in the System

Asked By jinagarashwin

10-Apr-08 05:59 AM

Hi All,

I hav an MFC apllication, which is used to store some report data to an
Excel file (using Excel automation process).

Before i store the data to excel file, i need to check
whether MS Excel is installed in the system or not.
if excel is not installed then i have to store the data to text file.

So how do i check whether excel is installed or not using MFC programming?

--
Thanks
Ash Jings

10-Apr-08 06:07 AM

Since you will be using the Excel automation interface why not try to
create the Excel object and if it fails you can assume you have to do
the text file option.

Dave

11-Apr-08 04:34 AM

I do something silmilar in a program,
I want to check if "Word" is installed.

The idea is to check the registry
weather the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Basic
exists or not. The function checking this
goes like that:

BOOL bIsWordInstalled = ProgIDExists(_T("Word.Basic"));

BOOL ProgIDExists(LPCTSTR szProgID)
{
BOOL bRet = FALSE;
HKEY hkey;

if (RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, szProgID, 0, KEY_READ, &hkey) ==
ERROR_SUCCESS)
{
bRet = TRUE;
RegCloseKey(hkey);
}

return bRet;
}

In case of Excel you would have to check
for another key in the registry. There are
a lot of keys related to Excel:
HKCR\Excel.Application
HKCR\Excel.Sheet
HKCR\Excel.Workspace
HKCR\ExcelWorksheet
I'm not sure which one will be your choice,
perhaps the one you use in your automation code.

HTH

10-Apr-08 02:52 PM

Use the Windows Installer SDK functions to query the installed
programs/features on the computer. You can also get other interesting
information such as the installation location, product version etc.

-Pete