Vlad answered your main question...ShellExecute does just fine at figuring out the extension and printing (or opening) it.

The answer to your other question is, the book's abbreviation is "AutoFox." :)

- della

>MS Office Automation with VFP (does this have an abbreviated moniker like HackFox yet?) explains how one can open up a word document and print it.
>
>But is there a programmatic means that's equivalent to using the file explorer to select a file, right clicking and then selecting print? (IOW, let Windows figure out what app the file belongs to and then fire up a print job ... all in one fell swoop?)