Is there some way I can programmatically (in VBS) OR by using CMD/RUN open the 'Open' dialog that contains the places bar and a browser but without opening say notepad or MSpaint?
http://i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC354177.jpg
I'd like to use this on the desktop itself, it would be really cool if there was a DLL I can just use instead of having a VBS file but if not i'm sure its possible in VBS.
I'm busy searching where the actual open dialog box comes from, it should come from some DLL file somewhere.
I might even consider stopping the windows shell from opening all together and just using this open window as the shell on some computers.
Regards, Rocklore
What version of Windows are you on?
"UserAccounts.CommonDialog" was the way to do this in XP. But it no longer exists in Windows 7. You may be able to use some of the flags available for the BrowseForFolder() method to make it look like a file open dialog. See this page for an example.
XP Edit:
Here's an XP example using UserAccounts.CommonDialog.
With CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog")
.InitialDir = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders("Desktop")
.Filter = "All Files|*.*"
' Show the dialog. If [Open] is clicked, save the name of the selected file...
If .ShowOpen Then strFile = .FileName
End With
Related
Context
I have a Windows app printing PDF files by forwarding the file paths to ShellExecuteEx and the verb print. Adobe Reader is installed and registered for that verb. Reader by default creates a LNK shortcut file in the start menu:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Adobe Acrobat DC.lnk
Hide windows
By default, reader shows a GUI window when printing a PDF. Some customer doesn't want that window and simply tried to "hide" it by changing the LNK file content using Windows Explorer properties to at least minimize the windows by default. That customer didn't know if that works or not, one simply tried.
To my surprise this worked, changing the minimize vs. non-minimize/default setting of the LNK file made the reader windows being visible or minimized.
No changes in registry
I've searched the registry for changed settings regarding the print verb, but couldn't find any. The new setting really seemed to be only stored within the LNK file:
The registry contained references to the actual EXE only, not the LNK file. Pretty much like expected, I've never came across any shell verb registration using LNK files at all.
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe" /p /h "%1"
Though, all invocations of the verb print seemed to recognize that setting, either manually using the context menu of some PDF in Windows Explorer or executing things on the shell:
powershell -Command "Start-Process -Verb print '\\?\C:\[...].pdf'"
Why is that important?
Adobe Reader provides the command line argument /h to minimize itself as well, but using that doesn't fully hide a window at all. Instead, a window is shown for a second or so and afterwards minimized, e.g. like Adobe is doing that itself. OTOH, with the changed LNK file things are different: Either really now window is shown at all or only some artifacts like the window title or alike for less than a second.
It really seems that the difference is between Adobe doing something on it own after it has loaded and stuff vs. Windows itself creating the minimized window already.
Additionally, if possible at all I would like to avoid customers needing to change the LNK file themself. The problem with that change is that it's not tied to the print verb only, but whenever Adobe Reader gets opened. And sometimes customers really need to have a look at PDFs themself instead of automatic printing only.
So, how does that work?
Is Windows itself using the setting of that LNK file or is this something implemented by Adobe Reader?
Using ProcMon, I couldn't find any hint about that Adobe Reader itself reads the LNK file. As well, I couldn't find this behaviour documented in the topics about shell verbs, ShellExecuteEx etc. It's totally unexpected to me, as the LNK file is some arbitrary file in theory, which might not exist at all, can be named as one likes, even multiple of those could exist in theory starting different apps of some package or the same app with different arguments etc.
Thanks for any insights.
I have a situation in which I wanted to utilize the camera app in Windows 10 from my Microsoft Access program. Normally I could just send a command to execute the program's executable, but with the metro app there is no straightforward executable.
The basic code I use is this:
Shell """" & PthToExe & """", vbNormalFocus
PthToExe is the path name for the executable.
I looked around a decent bit, but was unable to find any simple solutions and ended up coming up with my own. My solution is to make a shortcut link to the camera application and then to launch the link.
In order to make a shortcut link in Windows 10, you can click on the start button, go to "All Apps", find the app you want (in my case "Camera"), and then click and drag it to the desktop.
Now that you have a shortcut, you can launch the shortcut from a command line. (So my shortcut doesn't clutter up my desktop, I dragged it off my desktop and into a folder on the "C" drive.)
Type the path into a command prompt like this and hit enter to test launching your app: C:\GJ\Camera.lnk
So that solves the problem if you wanted to launch from a command line. For some reason, though, Access would not accept that command. The way I got around it was I put the command in a batch file (Edit: Alternatively, see HansUp's comment). To do that, you just need to open notepad, type in the same thing you typed in the command prompt, save the note pad document, and then rename the document to have a .bat extension.
You can then execute the .bat file from Microsoft Access as follows:
Shell "C:\GJ\OpenCamera.bat", vbMinimizedNoFocus
Note that normally, I use vbNormalFocus when running the shell command, but in this case, it is desirable not to see the little command prompt open before the actual program opens.
I have been working on an Excel macro to automate an Internet Explorer process at work. I'm incredibly close to figuring everything out, but at the end, the macro clicks on a "Download Report" button, which launches a new window. I need to initiate a few things on this new window but I cannot figure out how to change the focus of the macro to the new window. I have found a few things online, but they have been unsuccessful. I know there are ways to toggle between browser windows by telling Excel to look for the name of the browser window, and to activate it, but parts of the name of the new window are constantly changing (it's a unique URL for that particular window).
I was wondering if there might be a way to have the Macro look for just the first Nine letters of the window and switch to that window? Similar to the LEFT function in excel? The reason being is that the first 9 characters of the URL never change. The name of the original window (the one I'm trying to switch from) never changes, so maybe I could tell Excel to look for the the Browser Window that is NOT named the original one? Or any other ideas?
Thanks in advance for any help
Is the VBA AppActivate command what you are looking for?
You will need to add the references to the Internet Controls and shell. You just need to loop through the IE windows and look at the left hand side of the url. See below
Function GetInternetWindow(urlToLookFor as String) As InternetExplorer
Dim winShell As Shell
Dim ie As InternetExplorer
Set winShell = New Shell
'loop through the windows and look at the urls
For Each ie In winShell.Windows
If Left(ie.LocationURL, 9) = urlToLookFor Then
GetInternetWindow = ie
Exit For
End If
Next
End Function
I want to replace the standard system open file dialog with the one I wrote, that means no matter within which programs you are opening a file, my dialog will be shown instead of the standard one, is this possible?
It seems that that there is no such API provided to accomplish this, is it possible to use some hooking technique, but this has to be reliable and not to be treated as spyware by anti-virus tools?
any other options?
If this is not possible, is it possible to add to the spacebar or toolbar in the standard open file dialog a button which invokes my dialog, which allow users select a file and in turn returns the path of the selected file to the "File name" input box of the standard dialog?
Any hits, links and code examples will be appreciated.
Starting in Vista, the FileOpen/FileSave dialogs are now "Common Item Dialogs" of which IFileOpenDialog & IFileSaveDialog are the two published implementations.
Since they're just COM objects with known CLSIDs you might get away with just replacing them by re-registering using their CLSIDs. Never tried something like that, might trip all sorts of alarm bells.
Pre-Vista file dialogs can be hooked in process, but I've never come across anything about global hooks or equivalent.
If you copy a file/folder to a dialog's filename field it usually pastes the full path anyway.
For example, if you have open both a program calling the standard open/save dialog box and also have a window open at the file or path that you want to work with (open from/save to), you can simply copy the file/folder from the explorer window, and then paste into the filename field of the dialog box, and it will insert the full path of the file/folder. No custom script is required!
Alternatively, for those programs that use custom dialog boxes where this step fails, copy the same file/folder in the window into the address bar of the same window (assuming it is visible). This will paste the full path, which you can copy again, and then paste this full path into the custom dialog box. I often use this when creating Office hyperlinks (Ctrl+K), because the Insert Hyperlink dialog does not work for the first method.
You can also use similar methods but paste into address bar fields and it works.
I'm creating a small ruby script to resize images and save them in a specified directory. I'd like the application to be as transparent as possible.
Is it possible to allow file dropping onto my Ruby script in all platforms? For instance, the user drags a file onto the script, which then takes the file path as an argument and resizes the image accordingly -- No GUI, no console, etc..
The behavior of drag & drop is dependent on the OS (and in case of Linux of the Window Manager), so no.
In Windows, you get the behavior you want for free. Just put a .rb file on the Desktop, and the files dragged onto it will be arguments to your script.
Another easy way for integrating with Windows is to write to registry entry HKLM\Software\Classes*.jpg\myhandler\command with the command you want to appear in the context menu of Windows Explorer (right click on a jpg file will popup a menu which will have your script in the menu).
I don't use drag & drop at all in Linux, so I wouldn't know how to do that there. I would expect it to have more security issues (permissions must be right, ...) but you could get there by creating a .desktop file, see http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ for the complete standard, or read some examples from ~/Desktop/*.desktop .
Platform dependend, so here for windowsusers and reference only.
Save the following to a .reg file and load it by doublecliking it, tested on Windows Vista and 7
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rbfile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rbwfile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\RubyFile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\RubyWFile\ShellEx\DropHandler]
#="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"
Such behavior would surely be platform specific, as drag-and-drop is implemented by the OS in this case, not by ruby.
So answering your question: no, it is not possible.
You can use platypus on os x to create a wrapper around your script.
http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus
regards
Claus