>All that said, automation is NOT the best way to go. In fact, unless there is some need for communication between the applications, automation is overkill..
>

Actually, I think that the term is underkill- it won't tackle but a few of the file types- those with associated servers.


>There are two basic ways of accomplishing this task,

Actually, one and a half. :-)


>The first is to use the the Shell.Application ProgID
>
>

>oShell = CREATEOBJECT('Shell.Application')

The Shell object isn't present on all Windows systems- before using it, you have to ensure that Shell32.dll v 4.71 + is on the system. Earlier versions of the Shell library didn't offer this object. It installs automatically with recent versions of Windows and IE.

Secondly, with versions of Windows prior to Win2K, opening many document types with the Shell object's Open method resulted in the document not being opened with the app associated with it's Open verb, but the document being opened in Internet Explorer. For example, opening a Word document would open IE, and launch Word inside IE to view the document. Not exactly a showstopper, but not what I would call normal behavior. 

I think that ShellExecute is really the only way to go here.

Erik Moore
Clientelligence