Question

I have a program for which I have developed a user guide. I have placed this user guide within the project directory. I created a MenuStrip Item by which to open the user guide in Word on the user’s machine. I was successfully able to do this with the following code:

Try
        userGuide = MSWord.Documents.Open("C:Users\administrator\Documents\VisualStudio2010\Project3\UserGuide.doc")

        MSWord.WindowState = Word.WdWindowState.wdWindowStateNormal
        MSWord.Visible = True
    Catch ex As Exception
        MsgBox("An error has prevented the document from opening. The document may not be available." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
               "Please try one of the following options:" & vbCrLf & _
               "- Check to see if the document is already open" & vbCrLf & _
               "- Restart the program")
    End Try

The problem is, the path used to open the file will not exist on the users machine. This is a standalone system, so no file share can be created in which to place the document, therefore no common path can be coded.

Is there a way to code dynamic paths? Perhaps something like:

userGuide = MSWord.Documents.Open("%windir%\UserGuide.doc")

Thanks!

Answer 1

if the document will be stored relative to the install path of the application executable, then start with the path of the exe:

Dim path As String
path = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName( _
      System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)

Dim docPath as String;

docPath = Path.Combine(path,"UserGuide.doc");