Why do I receive sporadic failures with ACTXSERVER in MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b)?

With a call to ACTXSERVER in my code, sporadically I will receive the error:

??? Invoke Error: Call was rejected by callee.

The pattern is that first one or several times it may fail, but once it's working it keeps working. What may cause this sporadic nature?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

From the Common Remote OLE Automation Errors:

 <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141824/en-us>

Call was rejected by callee: "This error usually occurs when the server application is too busy to respond to the client. When a call comes into the Automation Manager, it will try to get the attention of the OLE thread for the target object. If the thread refuses the request (normally because it is busy with another request), the Automation Manager will pause and then try again. The Automation Manager will continue retrying until it succeeds or times out."

The following steps may help resolve this issue:

1. Run the Excel application as an administrator.

2. Check if any anti-virus application is interfering with Excel.

3. If the Excel sheet that you are trying to access using 'xlswrite' command has external links with 'Auto update' on, it might cause the Excel to stop responding sometimes. Turn off this feature.

4. Sometimes addon plugins on Excel (For example: Frontline Systems Add on/ Analytic Solver Platform (Excel and COM Add on)) may cause higher load time for MATLAB & consequently this issue may happen. Adding a pause in MATLAB code or disabling the add-ons may help.