excel - VBA won't close workbooks opened programatically

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I have written a VBA macro in an excel
spreadsheet that opens all workbooks in a specific location and pulls data out of those
workbooks and validates and copies it to the active workbook. It then opens the next
workbook in the directory and repeats the process until all files in the directory have
been read through.

Everything works, except I
cant seem to get the target workbooks to close once opened. This includes closing Excel.
I have to kill the process in the task manager or in powershell to free the workbook
from system memory.

Set fs =
            CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strExcelFileName =
            Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\Certs\*.xls", vbNormal)
Set xlApp =
            CreateObject("Excel.Application")

Do While (strExcelFileName
            <> "")
 xlApp.Workbooks.Open (ThisWorkbook.Path & "\Certs\" +
            strExcelFileName)
 'code to run for each workbook opened

            ***xlApp.Workbooks.Close*** 'when present, Excel freezes
 strExcelFileName =
            Dir 'next file in
            directory
Loop

When
the xlApp.Workbooks.Close line is present and called in the program, excel freezes every
time. Without it, I can run through 3-5 workbooks before the system is overwhelmed and
freezes. I then must kill those processes, move those files out, move 3 more in and
repeat until all files have been processed this way. It takes about an hour and a half
to go through 50.

What I am trying to
do is have the workbook where the data is grabbed from closed before the next one is
opened.

ActiveWorkbook.Close

This
attempts to close the workbook where the macro is running, not the workbook that has
been opened to be read from.

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class="normal">Answer

You
already have Excel open so you do not need to open another copy.
Try:

Set WBookOther =
            Workbooks.Open(PathCrnt & FileNameCrnt)

 :

            :
WBookOther.Close
            SaveChanges:=False

This
earlier answer of
mine which cycles though every workbook in the current folder may help
further.