Trouble using CALL SHELL()

[kevin3306]

I found and pasted the code called "Alternative to VB's Shell Function" into my application from this site. The SHELL command will not open a PDF file! Is Adobe doing something strange to their files that will not allow them to open? I am getting the path and file name from the Common Dialog Control. The weird thing is, I can right click the file in the CDC and choose "open with Acrobat..." and the file opens. If I left click the file and choose OPEN, I get nothing. If I pass the PATH to your SHELL command, I get nothing. If I pass "...system32\calc.exe" to your SHELL command I get the Windows Calculator, no problem. Any ideas?

[mstraf]

can you post the url where you found the code?
Marco

[kevin3306]

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.Asp?ID=264

[mstraf]

this works fine with me:

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" _
(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, _
ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
ByVal lpDirectory As String, _
ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long
Private Const SW_SHOW = 5


ShellExecute 0, "open", "C:\MyFolder\MyPDFFile.pdf", vbNullString, vbNullString, SW_SHOW

check that: 1) you are passing the full path name and that 2) the .pdf files have Acrobar Reader as the default application. For the second point, try to double click on a pdf file as see if it opens ok. If not, select Acrobat Reader from the list of applications and select it as the default.

Marco

[kevin3306]

That worked great and I thank you very much.