Powershell just deleting excel through task scheduler

Question

Hi,

I have the following scrip with is called from Windows Task Scheduler

$file = 'C:\Excel\Sage.xlsx'  
$x1 = New-Object -ComObject "Excel.Application"  
$x1.Visible = $false  
$enddate = (Get-Date).tostring("dd-MM-yy")  
$filename = 'C:\Excel\Test.xlsx'  
$wb = $x1.workbooks.Open($file)  
$wb.refreshall()  
$wb.SaveAs($filename)  
$wb.Close()  
$x1.Quit()  
Remove-Variable wb,x1  
Remove-Item $file  
Rename-Item $filename -NewName "Sage.xlsx"  

It runs fine an executes in Powershell editor and in vs code - however when i run it calling Powershell from the windows task scheduler ..all it does is delete the file called Sage..

Any idea why it is not doing any of the other instructions?

Answer 1

You really should read the information in the link posted by @Viorel .

Since you're not doing any error checking in your code I don't think you'll have much success in discovering the problem. The most likely cause is that the New-Object is failing and the variable "$x1" contains a $null value.

If you're going to write code that runs on a Windows server and works with Excel files then you should be using the ImportExcel PowerShell module: 7.0.1. The module does not use MS Office objects and works only with the software delivered with MS Windows (both client and server).

Answer 2

Probably Excel cannot be used from services and Task Scheduler: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/considerations-for-server-side-automation-of-office-48bcfe93-8a89-47f1-0bce-017433ad79e2. Maybe you must specify a normal user account in Task Scheduler?