Windows API & OLE

Is it possible to access the Win API and OLE enabled applications with RB?

Specifically, I would like to manipulate Excel cells, and return results to RB.

Hi,

At this time there is no ability to interact with OLE or Active-X controls, or even DLLs. You can read/write files, and you can use the shell$() function to call an external program.

-Carl

So... A workaround would be to have RB write a file with Excel input values, shell to the Excel workbook which has a macro that runs upon opening, the macro reads the input file, has Excel do its thing, and writes the output to a file. RB can then read the output file and continue.

Does this sound plausible?

Will the RB shell 'wait' for the external program to finish? If not, I guess RB can loop and wait for a 'finished' flag.