How can I use the common Save As dialog from VBScript?

Question

I\'d like to have my VBScript display the Windows Save As dialog box, but I could not find out how to do it.

Using this code:

Dim sfd
Set sfd = Creat         


        

Answer 1

If you have some degree of control over the systems on which you'll be deploying this, and can be reasonably certain that they have either Visual Studio or Microsoft HTML Help installed, you can use code like the following:

function filedialog(filt, def, title, save)
    set dialog = CreateObject("MSComDlg.CommonDialog")
    dialog.MaxFileSize = 256
    if filt = "" then
        dialog.Filter = "All Files (*.*)|*.*"
    else
        dialog.Filter = filt
    end if
    dialog.FilterIndex = 1
    dialog.DialogTitle = title
    dialog.InitDir = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders("MyDocuments")
    dialog.FileName = ""
    if save = true then
        dialog.DefaultExt = def
        dialog.Flags = &H800 + &H4
        discard = dialog.ShowSave()
    else
        dialog.Flags = &H1000 + &H4 + &H800
        discard = dialog.ShowOpen()
    end if
    filedialog = dialog.FileName
end function

Also, adapting one of the other answers to this question into VBScript code (thanks @oddacorn!), you should add this function if you aren't reasonably certain that your users will have VS or HTML Help. Call this function on program startup. Don't worry if you already have the key; in that case, this has no effect. This should work on a standard user account without admin rights.

'Make the MSComDlg.CommonDialog class available for use. Required for filedialog function.
function registerComDlg
    Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
    objRegistry.CreateKey &H80000001, "Software\CLASSES\Licenses\4D553650-6ABE-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905"
    objRegistry.SetStringValue &H80000001, "Software\CLASSES\Licenses\4D553650-6ABE-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905", "", "gfjmrfkfifkmkfffrlmmgmhmnlulkmfmqkqj"
end function

Note that I adapted the filedialog function from the "View Source" of the VBScript code in the HTML here; on modern web browsers, it appears that the HTML they use to render the code samples doesn't display correctly (tested on IE 8 and Chrome). But fortunately the code is still there in the View Source.

I found one thing that was critical to making this work on Windows 7 (SP1, fully patched); you must set dialog.MaxFileSize = 256 or you will get a run-time error.

That is, the following code fails on Windows 7 SP1, but probably works on older versions of Windows:

Set x = CreateObject("MSComDlg.CommonDialog")
x.ShowSave