Close Excel instances

Introduction

Pieter, a fellow worker, asked me if I know a tool that can close all Excel instances at once. He’s working with Microsoft Power BI and uses Excel to fix data. Pieter say’s that sometimes Excel don’t close, but hides itself from the user in a Windows background process. And instead of learning the details of the Windows task manager, he wants a tool that will close all Excel instances.

Solution

After searching the internet for closing Windows processes, I found a good article on StackOverflow. That information was enough to program a small Windows Console application. The installation procedure will add a desktop link to the app for your convenience.

Prerequisites

• Windows 10 operating system
• OS Preferably a sandbox/virutal machine
• All data will be lost for the Excel instances that are closed
• Use this tool at your own risk!

Installation

Open this page and follow the instructions.

Example C# code used in this tool.

using System.Diagnostics;
static void CloseExcelInstances()
{
    Process[] processes = Process.GetProcessesByName("Excel");

    foreach (Process instance in processes)
    {
        instance.Kill();
        instance.WaitForExit();
    }
}