Exception from HRESULT: 0x800401E3 (MK_E_UNAVAILABLE) Workarounds

c# ms-office
user1227708 picture user1227708 · Oct 10, 2012 · Viewed 19.9k times · Source

From the following call

Marshal.GetActiveObject("Excel.Application")

I get a

Operation unavailable (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800401E3 (MK_E_UNAVAILABLE))

I believe that this error is caused when the user permissions between my application and excel do not match.

I want to know if there is a workaround as to how I can access the opened excel application regardless of how excel is opened, I can open the program that I want to access excell from as an administrator.

Also I would like to know how I can tell what permissions processes were opened with? I have been using ProcessExplorer to look at the UserProfile (which was the same in both applications), and Owner (which was also the same BUILTIN\Administrators)

Background I have a program that run different tests by calling NUnit-console-x86. The application that is being tested opens up an excel form, this is the form that I want to read the data from. And when i run my program as administrator, or not I get these errors, I have also tried adding in Process.StartInfo.Verb = "runas"; to my program that starts up NUnit but I still get these errors

It appears installing visual studio fixes the problem although I do not want to have to install visual studio on every computer. Can anyone explain any of this to me?

Answer

Dylan Corriveau picture Dylan Corriveau · Nov 20, 2013

Looking at Microsoft Support Information, 0x800401e3 seems to be generated when excel (or office in general) isn't active or running in the Running Object Table. You have to have a copy of excel opened before you call this. Its either you haven't opened excel in code yet, or its not fully registered yet. Could this be the problem?

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