PPT97: Viewer Quit Method Does Not Close Viewer

WORKAROUND

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. To work around this problem, you can close PowerPoint Viewer by calling the Windows application programming interface (API) SendMessage function with the WM_CLOSE message. As the following sample code demonstrates, PowerPoint Viewer cleans up the environment and exits when it receives the WM_CLOSE message.

NOTE: The following code does not close PowerPoint Viewer if it is showing a presentation.

   Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias _
      "FindWindowA" (ByVal lpClassName As Long, _
      ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long

   Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias _
      "SendMessageA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, _
      ByVal wParam As Long, lParam As Any) As Long

   Sub QuitViewer97()

      Const WM_CLOSE As Long = &H10

      Dim hwnd As Long, lReturn As Long

      ' Get a handle to the PowerPoint Viewer 97 window.
      hwnd = FindWindow(0&, "Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer")

      ' Verify the handle is valid.
      If hwnd = 0 Then
         MsgBox "Unable to obtain Viewer 97 window handle." _
            & vbCrLf + "The Viewer may not be running.", vbInformation
         End
      End If

      ' Send the close message to PowerPoint Viewer 97.
      lReturn = SendMessage(hwnd, WM_CLOSE, 0&, 0&)

      ' Verify the SendMessage command was successful.
      If lReturn = 0 Then
         MsgBox "Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 97 has been closed.", _
            vbInformation
      Else
         MsgBox "Unable to close Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 97", _
         vbInformation
      End If

   End Sub