Question

I have a windows .net program that (among other things) will display image files. These can be in either TIFF or PDF format, and at the moment the way they are displayed is to see what the file extension is, then to call the appropriate program to display that file.

Here’s the code fragment:

            imagepath = imagedataset.Tables("Table").Rows(imagecal).Item(2)
        imagepath = "\\tylerimaging\DocumentUpload\" & imagedataset.Tables("Table").Rows(imagecal).Item(3) & "\" & imagedataset.Tables("table").Rows(imagecal).Item(4)
        Dim PDFImage As String = imagepath.Substring(imagepath.Length - 3)
        If UCase(PDFImage) = "PDF" Then
            System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("AcroRd32.exe", imagepath)
        Else
            Try
                System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MSPVIEW.EXE", imagepath)
            Catch ex As Exception
                If ex.Message = "The system cannot find the file specified" Then
                    System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("ois.exe", imagepath)
                End If
            End Try
        End If
    End If

Now, the problem is that if someone doesn’t have the acrobat reader installed, for example, but the full version of adobe acrobat, the process.start for AcroRd32.exe will fail. But, Windows clearly has the association between the file type of PDF and Acrobat – so, here’s my question – how can I get the file displayed by whatever program is associated with that file type in Windows?

Thanks in Advance….

Answer 1

Try calling Process.Start on the PDF or TIFF file itself. Windows will take care of it or raise an exception if nothing is associated with the file type.