"Unable to get the Open property of the Workbooks class" when automated - excel

Question

I have some PowerShell scripts that invoke SQL commands, take the results and put them into a CSV file, then the CSV file is put into an excel workbook and it's emailed out to a distribution list. I had no issues running these reports through Windows Scheduled tasks on my older Windows 2008 server running SQL 2008. But I have migrated over to Windows 2016 running SQL 2016. Now when I run this process through Scheduled tasks I get the following error:
Unable to get the Open property of the Workbooks class
At C:\PowerShell\scrpits\ArtiReport3.ps1:607 char:1
+ $workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open($csvFilePath)
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [], COMException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
If I run the PowerShell script manually I have no issues and everything runs fine. I'm using the same login to run the scripts manually as I do through scheduled tasks. Here is the script.
$query = "*SQL Query runs here*"
#Edit these peramters for the server this will be running on#
$smtpServer = "*server*";
$smtpFrom = "I3Reports#server.com";
$smtpTo = "*email list here*”
$messageSubject = "I3 Report";
#create anonymus loging for sending e-mail#
$User = "anonymous";
$PWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "anonymous" -AsPlainText -Force
$Creds = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $user, $pword
$date = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1).ToString('yyyy-MM-dd')
$date = $date+"_I3Report.xls";
$csvFilePath = "c:\Scripts\queryresults.csv"
$excelFilePath = "c:\scripts\$date"
$instanceName = "*server*"
Import-Module "sqlps"
$results = Invoke-Sqlcmd -QueryTimeout 7200 -Query $query -ServerInstance $instanceName
# Output to CSV
$results | export-csv $csvFilePath -Delimiter " " -NoTypeInformation
#this line will remove all the quotation marks from the csv file
(Get-Content $csvFilePath) | % {$_ -replace '"', ""} | out-file -FilePath $csvFilePath -Force
# Convert CSV file to Excel
$excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application
$excel.visible = $False
$excel.displayalerts=$False
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open($csvFilePath) #<-- Program fails here
$workSheet = $workbook.worksheets.Item(1)
#$workSheet.cells.item(3,3) = "HOPLA"
#for freezing pane#
$workSheet.application.activewindow.splitcolumn = 0
$workSheet.application.activewindow.splitrow = 1
$workSheet.Range("A2").application.activewindow.freezepanes = $true
$resize = $workSheet.UsedRange
$resize.EntireColumn.AutoFit() | Out-Null
$xlExcel8 = 43
$workbook.SaveAs($excelFilePath, $xlExcel8)
$workbook.Close()
$excel.quit()
$excel = $null
send-mailmessage -from $smtpFrom -to $smtpTo -subject "$messageSubject" -body "Attachment" -Attachments $excelFilePath -smtpServer $smtpServer -Credential $creds;
As mentioned this works when I run it in PowerShell manually, but through scheduled tasks it gets that error and it references the section I noted in the code. I've been working on this for days and I can't seem to figure out what is causing the issue. Any help or suggestions is welcomed. Thanks for taking the time.

Answer 1

I found the solution to this problem here
Powershell Excel Automation - Save/Open fails in Scheduled Task
Creating the folders and gaining access to the directories that they are in did it for me.