>So it is the Chicken and Egg problem. I have to start the exe as a DDE in order to get the handle. Right now there is no DDE start so there is no handle. I am letting the operating system bring up what ever the user has defined to handle the tif extension.
>
> oShellExecute = newobject('c40shellexecute','c40utilities','',tcfullTIFpath)
> *
> * Execute the shell exec command
> *
> oShellExecute.Execute()
> *
> * Release the object valiables
> RELEASE oShellExecute
>
>Where tcfulltifpath points to the tif image that the user wishes to view

Well you can start this app via DDE... rather than via ShellExcute. Don't you?