Find existing instance of Office Application

Question

Is there any way to get existing instance of MS Publisher as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.Application?

I've found this:

System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("Microsoft Publisher")

So I can check if this is already running, but how to convert it to MS Publisher application? So I can call Microsoft.Office.Interop.Publisher.Application.Open for e.g.?

Answer 1

You could try this Microsoft getActiveObject. Here's an example.

    object word;
    try
    {
        word = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Word.Application");
//If there is a running Word instance, it gets saved into the word variable
    }
    catch (COMException)
    {
//If there is no running instance, it creates a new one
        Type type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Word.Application");
        word = System.Activator.CreateInstance(type);
    }

Hope i helped!