Any ideas why the following code does not exit the Outlook 2007 process created via COM interop?
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application app = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application();
var item = app.Session.OpenSharedItem("C:\\test.msg") as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem;
string body = item.HTMLBody;
int att = item.Attachments.Count;
(item as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook._MailItem).Close(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlInspectorClose.olDiscard);
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(item);
(app as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook._Application).Quit();
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app);
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
An almost identical snippet using Word works, so I wonder if I'm forgetting to clean up something...
You have a 3rd COM object referenced in your code: app.Session
. This must also be released correctly. Try this code:
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application app = null;
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.NameSpace session = null;
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem item = null;
try {
app = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application();
session = app.Session;
item = session.OpenSharedItem("C:\\test.msg") as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem;
string body = item.HTMLBody;
int att = item.Attachments.Count;
(item as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook._MailItem).Close(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlInspectorClose.olDiscard);
(app as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook._Application).Quit();
} finally {
if(item != null) {
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(item);
}
if(session != null) {
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(session);
}
if(app != null) {
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject(app);
}
}
I don't know the specifics of the Office COM Interops, but here's some code suggested from an MSDN article. It suggests the double collect/wait and clearing of the pointers helps with the RCW wrapper cleanup.
item = null;
app.Quit();
app = null;
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
That url however also suggests
while (Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app) > 0) { }
which I would personally strongly advise against if you can help it, as you've basically just destroyed that RCW for your AppDomain (as the article points out).
[Edit: Also the .Net garbage collector behaves very differently when inside a debugger vs release code, so testing this outside of the debugger is very important]
Try this instead, it works for me, there will be a few second delay before it goes:
app.Quit(); //
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app);
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
Try following after app.Quit();
// ReleaseComObject(xApp);
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
GC.Collect();