Paul....

The point I was making is that if you step through the code as previously shown, regardless of the current state of Excel, the code ALWAYS invokes ANOTHER instance of Excel with no Workbook open. Also, the flag "gbooExcelIsRunning" is NEVER set, so using this code I'll always terminate Excel, regardless of its original state.

If, after the line I look at the "new" instance of Excel, under the File tab, the only available options are "Open/Recent/New/Help/Options/Exit", and the header in the Excel Window is just "Microsoft Excel", not "Name.Type - Microsoft Excel".

I strongly suspect it's all caused by a setting on my PC, but I'm bewildered (as usual) as to what it could be.