>>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?

Yeah I guess I could evaluate if the image viewer is a DDE controled one and start them off differently than one I have no control over. I will experiment on this and see.