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This article provides supplementary remarks to the reference documentation for this API.
GetActiveObject exposes the COM GetActiveObject function from OLEAUT32.DLL; however, the latter expects a class identifier (CLSID) instead of the programmatic identifier (ProgID) expected by this method. To obtain a running instance of a COM object without a registered ProgID, use platform invoke to define the COM GetActiveObject function. For a description of platform invoke, see Consuming Unmanaged DLL Functions.
ProgID and CLSID
Keys in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree of the registry contain a variety of subkey types. Most of the subkeys are ProgIDs, which map a user-friendly string to a CLSID. Applications often use these human-readable strings instead of the numeric CLSIDs. Often, a component has a version-independent ProgID that is mapped to the latest version of the component that is installed on the system.
Applications and components primarily use ProgIDs to retrieve their corresponding CLSIDs.
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