Find and run Outlook.exe

[Guest]

Hi:

I'm trying to find a way to find and run Outlook.exe on any user's system on
our network. Typically, Outlook.exe is located at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\OUTLOOK.EXE on the user's local
disk. I need to launch Outlook from a VB Script. My code looks like this:

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
oShell.Run "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\OUTLOOK.EXE"

However, this doesn't work. I get a cannot find the file error even though
this is the location on my system . If I put a copy of Outlook.exe in a
folder on a mapped network drive it will work using the path
"//servername/folder/folder/Outlook.exe".

Does anyone have a method to find Outlook.exe wherever it may be on a user's
system (network drive or local disk) and build a path that the script shell
can run?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

What version of Outlook are you running? Normally for Outlook 2003 the path
would be to
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe".

The path for the Outlook executable can be found in the registry. You can
try using HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App
Paths\OUTLOOK.EXE\Path to get the Outlook installation path.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Ken.

It looks like using the path key has potential, but it didn't work when I
tried it. I got an invalid root in path key error. We currently have
Outlook 2000. It is installed locally on each user's machine. In a few
months we'll be going to Outlook 2003 on a thin client installation using a
Citrix server.

If I look for the key in regedit, the value is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\"; which when concatenated to "Outlook.exe" as the path
argument to the shell should run Outlook. Given that I receive an invalid
root error with the code "oPath = oShell.regread(oRegKey)" and that I was
originally receiving a file not found error with simply a string as the
argument to the shell.run, I would say that there must be something I'm
missing here in how to reference the local disk on a networked machine.

Any ideas?

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

This is a hard drive on a network machine? That you'd need to access using a
UNC path or mapped network drive.

If it's a local drive on that machine the path you used should work. Other
than that the only thing I can think of would be to try one of the short
paths like C:\Progra~, etc.