Serge, I guess I did not communicate my issue too clearly, my apologies.  I'm aware that those extra methods and code blocks were a bit silly and unnecessary, but otherwise it does not work for me.  I've paired down my code to your suggestions and tried different combinations of things, but it just doesn't seem to grab the active excel instance.  

Also, I have downloaded the JExcel as per your suggestion and will look into it more.  However, on first glance, it seems like much more than what my company needs.  Afterall, we don't really need a robust application, just the ability to check for some values in certain cells on a sheet.

Here's my code, please let me know if you have any suggestions.  I have the functionality I want already done with Jacob...but the results are unreliable at times.  And Jacob is pretty old and unmaintained.

Thanks again,

    -Alejandro

package lib;

import junit.framework.TestCase;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.Automation;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.IDispatch;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.OleMessageLoop;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.impl.IDispatchImpl;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.types.Variant;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.com.ComFunctions;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.com.IUnknown;

import com.jniwrapper.win32.com.types.CLSID;

public class ExcelCommunicator2 extends TestCase {

     private static final String classID = "{00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}";     

     //private static final String classID = "{00020820-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}";

     private IDispatch application = null;

     private Automation automation = null;

    public void testRow() {

         ExcelCommunicator2 test = new ExcelCommunicator2();

        try {

             OleMessageLoop.invokeMethod(test, "init");

            OleMessageLoop.invokeMethod(test, "testValue");

        } catch (Exception e) {

             e.printStackTrace();

        }

         OleMessageLoop.stop();

         //System.exit(0);

    }

    public void init() {

         CLSID CLSID_MSExcelApplication = new CLSID(classID);

        //ComFunctions.coInitialize();

        IUnknown test = ComFunctions.getActiveObject(CLSID_MSExcelApplication);

        application = new IDispatchImpl(test);

        application.setAutoDelete(false);

    }

    public void testValue() {       

         IDispatch workbooks = getProperty(application, "Workbooks");        

         IDispatch  workbook = getProperty(workbooks, "Item", 1);

        IDispatch worksheets = getProperty(workbook, "Worksheets");

        IDispatch worksheet = getProperty(worksheets, "Item", 1);         

        IDispatch range = getProperty(worksheet, "Range", "D14");

        automation = new Automation(range);

        double z = Double.parseDouble(automation.getProperty("Value").getValue().toString());

        System.out.println("anything?! " + z);

        //sendkeys works, but causes a jvm 1.5 crash

        //invokeMethod(application, "SendKeys", new Object[] {new String("{RIGHT}")} );

        invokeMethod(application, "Quit", new Object[] {});

    }

    private static IDispatch getProperty(IDispatch obj, String propertyName, String index) {

        Automation methodAutomation = new Automation(obj);

        return (IDispatchImpl)methodAutomation.getProperty(propertyName).getPdispVal();

    }

    private static IDispatch getProperty(IDispatch obj, String propertyName) {

        Automation methodAutomation = new Automation(obj);

        return (IDispatchImpl)methodAutomation.getProperty(propertyName).getPdispVal();

    }

    private static IDispatch getProperty(IDispatch obj, String propertyName, int index) {

        Automation methodAutomation = new Automation(obj);

        return (IDispatchImpl)methodAutomation.getProperty(propertyName).getPdispVal();

    }

    private static IDispatch invokeMethod(IDispatch obj, String methodName, Object[] params) {

        Automation methodAutomation = new Automation(obj);

        Variant result = methodAutomation.invoke(methodName, params);

        IDispatchImpl pdispVal = (IDispatchImpl)result.getPdispVal();

        return pdispVal;

    }

}

-

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.MessageLoopThread.doInvokeAndWait(MessageLoopThread.java:232)

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.MessageLoopThread.doInvokeMethod(MessageLoopThread.java:296)

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.automation.OleMessageLoop.invokeMethod(SourceFile:191)

     at lib.ExcelCommunicator2.testRow(ExcelCommunicator2.java:32)

     at watij.WatijBatchTemplateReport.testReport(WatijBatchTemplateReport.java:89)

     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:154)

     at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:127)

     at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106)

     at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124)

     at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109)

     at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:118)

     at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:208)

     at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:203)

     at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:478)

     at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:344)

     at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)

Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.MessageLoopThread$MethodInvocationAction.run(MessageLoopThread.java:656)

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.MessageLoopThread$LoopThread.run(MessageLoopThread.java:502)

Caused by: com.jniwrapper.win32.com.ComException: COM object method returns error code: 0x800401E3; Operation unavailable

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.com.ComException.checkResult(SourceFile:72)

     at com.jniwrapper.win32.com.ComFunctions.getActiveObject(SourceFile:414)

     at lib.ExcelCommunicator2.init(ExcelCommunicator2.java:46)

     ... 6 more

Serge,

My apologies, I think we're basically saying the same things differently.  I'm still having trouble getting my code to work.  Shouldn't this code snippet suffice for grabbing an existing instance of excel?  I put a thread sleep in there to ensure the Excel instance that is being opened is given enough time to register, its probably trivial.

But I cannot get this to work, getting the same error.  Any ideas or suggestions are very welcome.    -Alex

    public void getExcel() {
        CLSID clsid = CLSID.createFromProgID("Excel.Application");
        ComFunctions.coInitialize();
        try {
            Thread.sleep(10 * 1000);
            
            IUnknown app = ComFunctions.getActiveObject(clsid); 
            Automation excelAppAutomation = new Automation(app, true);
 
            Variant result = excelAppAutomation.getProperty("Caption");
            System.out.println("result = " + result.getValue());
 
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // no MS Excel application running
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }