I am writing a document manager for use within our IS group. I am storing the name and location of documents within my table and wish to give the user the ability to launch the appropriate external application when they select a document for viewing within my application. For instance if they select a DOC file from the list I want my application to load the document in Word or Wordpad whichever they have setup as the associated application. If they select a TXT file I want to load whatever program is associated with text files, like Notepad, etc. It would be best if the application opened in a seperate process. I do not know the associations or the location of the various external applications on the users hard drive so I can't specify explicitly what application to run.

Unforetunately the RUN command doesn't seem to understand associations like Windows Explorer does.

It seems like OLE Automation might be useful but I have no way of knowing what the appropriate load commands are for the various applications associated with the documents. If I could only emulate what Explorer is doing.

Thanks in advance.