Comments for How do I automatically close a program so that its data can be backed up?

Comment from chocka on 2010-12-06

2010-12-06T17:38:36Z

This is nearly the answer I'm looking for. So I tried to find at NirCMD the solution, but couldnot find it.

Q: How do I automatically start a task after I close a specific program (application)

Because I only start scheduled tasks on time or when I start my PC. But I want a scheduled task when I close a program (application)

I will give a simple example: I will automatically clean my PC and backup some specific files after I close Firefox.

I've not looked into the details much, but the Task Scheduler in Windows 7 has some fairly comprehensive "events" that you can trigger a task from. I'd write a batch file to do the clean up you want and see if the Task Scheduler couldn't be used to automate its run.

07-Dec-2010

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Comment from Mohammad on 2010-11-03

2010-11-03T16:15:27Z

Hi,
We have a limited number of floating licences for one of our packages. Most users logon for a few minutes the forget to logout, how can i force a logout after a set period of time.

cheers

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Comment from Marinos Andreou on 2010-08-30

2010-08-30T09:07:25Z

There is a utility written specifically for closing outlook. It's called Close Outlook 1.0 but I haven't tried it and I don't know if it closes Outlook without killing it.

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Comment from MrCat on 2010-08-23

2010-08-24T00:05:11Z

This worked very well. I was trying to close down Lotus Sametime Connect, but the closeprocess command didn't seem to be doing anything. I just changed it to killprocess, and Bob is now my uncle.

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Comment from John on 2010-08-13

2010-08-13T13:51:46Z

Leo thanks for this tip it was exactly what I was looking for.

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Comment from Nerisha on 2010-07-28

2010-07-28T08:31:24Z

Thanks, I managed to close Outlook, but some of our users forget to save and close some emails, so the command will as to save to emails in drafts. I want to automate the "Yes" answer so that it when it asks if I want to save changes, it automatically clicks "yes" and shuts down outlook. I tried this: nricmd.exe closeprocess outlook.exe dlg "" "" click yes. This does not work. Please help

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Comment from Jeff on 2010-07-19

2010-07-20T06:51:53Z

i dont have nircmd.exe on my computer.. help

That's because it's not part of windows. You have to download it by using the link in the article.

20-Jul-2010

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Comment from MammaMia55 on 2010-06-06

2010-06-07T04:41:59Z

I have a related issue you may be able to help with. I am running outlook 7 on two computers connected a home wireless network - the main study one has Windows 7 and the kids/kitchen one has xp. I want to be able to log in to outlook from the kitchen one but can't because the outlook.pst is still in use by the one in the study. (see below for message) Is there any way of making one computer automatically log out of outlook when the other computer is trying to open it?
Alternatively, is there a way of automatically logging out of outlook if it hasn't been used in, say, half an hour?
I know I could get in the habit of closing outlook each time but I have three small children and never seem to be able to finish a sentence let alone finish what I need to do on outlook and log out.
thanks
Kimberley

the message that appears when I try to open outlook from the kitchen computer is Cannot start microsoft office outlook. Cannot open the outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The file ..... outlook.pst cannot be opened.
All Windows/virus/spyware up to date.

I'm of the opinion that accessing a PST across the network like that is asking for trouble, where trouble means PST corruption and lost contents. It used to be that Outlook wouldn't even let you access a PST across a network.

To answer your question: no, I'm not aware of a solution to automatically or remotely close Outlook or release the PST. With one exception:

Remote desktop. But if you have remote desktop, then I strongly recommend that instead of closing Outlook on the remote machine, you use Outlook on the remote machine. That's essentially what I've always done.

09-Jun-2010

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Comment from Ville on 2010-05-30

2010-05-31T02:02:32Z

I've seen mixed results with using nircmd to close applications gracefully. Outlook, for example, mostly doesn't close on Win 7 although *sometimes* it does. In other words it's not reliable enough.

Looking for other alternatives I quickly wrote a script for the excellent (commercial) Macro Scheduler. However, on a budget a compiled AutoHotKey (www.autohotkey.com) script works just as well.

Here's a simple AutoHotKey script that closes Outlook (use AutoHotKey's Ehk2Exe to convert the script into an executable command which can then be automated to run before the backup process):

; -- begin script --
SetTitleMatchMode RegEx

IfWinExist .*Microsoft\sOutlook
{
WinClose .*Microsoft\sOutlook
}
; -- end script --

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Comment from James Senn on 2009-06-11

2009-06-11T16:28:07Z

I forget to logo off my password protected e-mail program sometimes and then any one can see it, is there a way to have my e-mail program auto close my password when I close my internet explorer page?

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Comment from Scott on 2009-03-31

2009-03-31T20:36:03Z

Leos technique worked flawlessly! T Perfect solution for me.
Thanks Leo!

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Comment from Mike on 2008-10-24

2008-10-24T15:32:45Z

After I add closeprocess outlook.exe to the run line, save the task and click run, the status column says could not start. What am I doing wrong? I am admin.

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Comment from Patrick Versyck on 2008-06-21

2008-06-21T13:10:22Z

Hello,

nircmd works perfectly when executed interactively (in batchfile or from commandline) but not when executed in Task Scheduler on my Vista PC

Did I overlook a setting or is Vista a problem ?

Grtz

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Comment from Fred Polhout on 2007-06-19

2007-06-19T23:16:01Z

Whe I saw this article, I thought: great, just what I need. But is doesn't work. I get the following log:
"nircmd.job" (nircmd.exe closeprocess outlook.exe) 20-6-2007 1:12:54 ** ERROR **
Unable to start task.
The specific error is:
0x80070005: Access is denied.
Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.

Any idea's? I am Administrator.

Thx

cu, Fr@

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Comment from Lex on 2007-04-14

2007-04-14T19:31:10Z

I noticed no quotations were put into the command in this example. It did not work for me without quotations. Once I put them in, it ran perfectly. I'm using WXPPro. Other than that, thanks.

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Comment from linxs on 2006-12-31

2007-01-01T02:51:59Z

thanks for the info leo, i tried this, cuz i need to close a program during night, but it just kinda block the program, it doesnt close it, i have to close the process manually cuz the program dont respond anymore, do you know any solution to this?

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Comment from Snorri on 2006-08-31

2006-08-31T10:12:24Z

Thx so much for this! It helped me out so much! I didn't have trouble with Outlook but with another program, so thx :D

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Comment from Douglas J. Nakakihara on 2006-07-12

2006-07-13T04:23:30Z

I wrote a little utility to specifically close Microsoft Outlook so you can back up the PST file. It's freeware and you can download at http://offbe.at/files/default.aspx Note that my utility closes Outlook "nicely" and does not kill the process, so the PST file won't get corrupted.

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Comment from Eli Coten on 2006-06-17

2006-06-18T00:57:25Z

I think the original question is confused between Outlook Express and Office Outlook.

Outlook Express uses DBX files to store the mail folders - not PST. It comes for free with Internet Explorer 4, and any version of Windows since 98.

Microsoft Office Outlook comes with Microsoft Office which you have to buy. It uses PST files.

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Comment from Alex Lehaen on 2006-06-17

2006-06-17T10:36:42Z

Hello everybody,

I think i have the solution for the outlook problem. I do this for more then a year now on my servers. I used retrospect together with maxtor one touch to, but it's no stable solution for back-up specialy not for servers because my maxtors (two) made some problems regular.
Now the solution, use SyncBackSe from 2brightspaks, install it on the pc where outlook is instaled and your PST file will be backed up together with your other data . Succes!!http://2brightsparks.com/
Alex.

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Comment from Neville on 2006-06-13

2006-06-13T20:49:00Z

Thanks Leo for finding a solution. I lost my hard disk a few months back and was lucky enough to have remembered to manually close Outlook before the scheduled overnight backup. I had a complete backup that was only a few hours old when the hard disk died. More luck than good management. By using this, it removes one of the elements of luck so thank you again.

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