I would like to create a display on a form that has a layout and functionality similar to Outlook. I want to have a tree-view on the left (Navigation pane) showing folder & subfolders on the hard drive. The top right pane shows the files in the folder selected in the treeview. The bottom right pane shows the content of the file selected in the top right window.

The files can be of any type, e.g. txt, jpg, pdf, Word document, Excel, etc.

This seems like a big task to do from scratch. I would think that automating Windows Explorer, or Outlook might be able to accomplish this. I know that Outlook is able to display the contents of files that it "knows about", e.g. JPG attachments.

I would appreciate any suggestions of where to look for a strategy to implement this.

Thanks,
Jim