I need to open an excel file, test something with it, and then close said excel file within a Java application. I am on a Mac, and I have tried the following ways to do this but I was unsuccessful.

I tried to use the java AWT Desktop (java.awt.Desktop) class, like this:

//excel is selected by the OS as the default application to open this file
Desktop.getDesktop().open(new File(excelFile.getAbsolutePath())); 

This works to open the file, process the file, and it looks like it works with a standard QuitHandler which would exit on System.exit(0). I can create a custom QuitHandler, but what is confusing me is how can I dispatch a message to the Desktop to let it know that it needs to quit.

The docs for Desktop says

The handler is passed a one-shot {@link java.awt.desktop.QuitResponse} which can cancel or proceed with the quit.

If I check the Docs for handleQuitRequestWith within QuitResponse, I see

Implementors must call either {@link QuitResponse#cancelQuit()}, {@link QuitResponse#performQuit()}, or ensure the application terminates. The process (or log-out) requesting this app to quit will be blocked until the {@link QuitResponse} is handled.

The method signature looks like public void handleQuitRequestWith(QuitEvent e, QuitResponse response);.

What I am confused in is how can I use this in order to let the desktop application know to quit? Is there a way to dispatch a message to make it quit?

I have also tried to execute a command through the Runtime class like this:

Process excelProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("open " + excelFile.getAbsolutePath());

This would give me a Process to reference, and I can call the destroy method when I didn’t need it anymore, but the problem that I had with this approach was that the file would not open. I executed the raw command from exec in my terminal, and the file opened in excel without any issues. I’m not a huge fan of this approach because it seems a bit kludgy, but I wanted to call it out that I tried this approach. Ideally, I would like to be able to use the Desktop API if possible.