VBA: How to run another application from MS Access

Question

I\'ve been trying to get this issue figured out, and it seems that I cannot find the solution to the problem anywhere. Here was the first part: VBA Shell command always retu

Answer 1

I always use ShellExecute from the Windows API when I need to execute something in VBA.
As far as I know, it works on machines without full privileges as well.

Example:

Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
    ByVal lpOperation As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
    ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal lpnShowCmd As Long) As Long


Public Sub ShellEx(ByVal Path As String, Optional ByVal Parameters As String, Optional ByVal HideWindow As Boolean)

    If Dir(Path) > "" Then
        ShellExecute 0, "open", Path, Parameters, "", IIf(HideWindow, 0, 1)
    End If

End Sub

Now you can call ShellEx to run pretty much anything:

'run executable
ShellEx "c:\mytool.exe"

'open file with default app
ShellEx "c:\someimage.jpg"

'open explorer window
ShellEx "c:\"

Note that ShellEx has two optional parameters as well.
I didn't show this in the above examples, but you can:

• pass parameters to executables
• hide the window of the called executable