Find Program Using VBA in Excel

[tmyers]

Is there a method using VBA to track down a programs file path? I found some examples in C# but have not been able to find anything in VBA to give me guidance on it.

What I am trying to do is rather than hardcode the file path for Acrobat, I would like to find it via VBA in case the next person who happens to use the file does not have it installed in the same location as myself (such as their D drive rather than C). I am doing a decent bit of interaction with Acrobat, so if the path ends up being different, nothing will work hence the problem of hard coding it . Thanks in advance!

 

[KitaYama]

Are you trying to find the installed path of an application or the path of a specific file?

The path of all installed applications can be found in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\

You can read the registry if you need to find the path to any application.

Edit : How to read registry

Read and Write Windows Registry with VBA

VBA offers the functions GetSetting , SaveSetting , GetAllSettings and DeleteSetting for reading and writing the Windows Registry. (For detailed info see the Microsoft VBA help for these functions or look at the MSDN ) But unfortunately you can't access the entire registry, only the path…

vba-corner.livejournal.com

https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/vb/excel+vba+read+registry+key+value

 

[tmyers]

The installed path of an application. In this instance I am trying to find Acrobat so I can launch the .exe file to start messing with PDF's.

 

[KitaYama]

The installed path of an application. In this instance I am trying to find Acrobat so I can launch the .exe file to start messing with PDF's.

You have to check for the value in this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\Acrobat.exe

 

[KitaYama]

If you want to open a pdf you don't need to know the path to the exe file
you simply can run the following. Windows takes care of the location of the exe.

Dim Ret as variant
strPath="C:\myfile.pdf"
Ret=Shell("rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler " & strPath, vbMaximizedFocus)

 

[tmyers]

I cant seem to get either webpages you linked to load

Edit:
I will give the Shell way a go as that seems much simpler lol

 

[KitaYama]

I cant seem to get either webpages you linked to load

Edit:
I will give the Shell way a go as that seems much simpler lol

I edited the above shell

 

[tmyers]

Thank you Kita!
I will work with this and report back if I run into any problems.