How to get the process ID of the current Excel instance, through VBA, without using the caption?

You can use this method to get the current process id.

Declare Function GetCurrentProcessId Lib "kernel32" () As Long

This page has a good overview of exactly how you can do it in various versions of excel.

As a vba n00b, some other things I did not know

The Declare statement goes at the top. VBA will complain if the declare statement is inserted after a sub declaration

For example, this will work

Declare Function GetCurrentProcessId Lib "kernel32" () As Long

Sub Update
  ...
  ...
End Sub

But this will not work

Sub Update
  ...
  ...
End Sub

Declare Function GetCurrentProcessId Lib "kernel32" () As Long

Here is how we display the PID in a messagebox in vbscript

Set app = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
MsgBox("Excel PID is " + CStr(app.Run("GetCurrentProcessId")))

Hope this helps someone

My solution in Excel 2013: in a new module, I added the following code:

Private Declare Function GetCurrentProcessId Lib "kernel32" () As Long

Public Sub Test()
    Debug.Print GetCurrentProcessId
End Sub

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