Find and run Outlook.exe

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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