Have you been trying to develop a flexible method of determining the path to launch an application. You quickly learn that software developers, in some instances, make it indredibly difficult for us to create a simple static path for the executable directory.

For instance, say you create a database and then deploy it, you can’t just use a static path to launch it, like:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE 11\MSACCESS.EXE

because this will work only with Office 2003. What happens if your user is using 2007, 2010, 2000, …???

So what can one do? Well, it is possible to create a series of if statements, to check and see if a 2010 folder exists, if not, then check for 2007, and so on, but this once again rellies on a series of static enties that you make as a developer. For typical installation this would work, but what about that special user that didn’t install Office in the typical location? Your script will fail, no and if or about it!

So What Can One Do?! Actually, the solution is quite straight foward and works for most every program. All we need to do is check with the registry as to where the program was installed/configured! That’s right, let’s just ask the computer, “where did you put the application”? The beauty is in its simplicity.

For MS access, we only need to do the following

Dim WSHShell
Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\MSACCESS.EXE\")

Obviously, instead of sending the result to a msgbox we could assign it to a variable and use it to actually launch a database.

What other programs can we use this technique with? You name it: Excel, Groove, Internet Explorer, FireFox, Info Path, MS Access, One Note, Outlook, Power Point, Word, … and the list goes on. Below is but a few examples of other programs.

Dim WSHShell
Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
'MS Excel
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\excel.exe\")
'Groove
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\GROOVE.EXE\")
'Internet Explore
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\IEXPLORE.EXE\")
'Info Path
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\infopath.exe\")
'MS Access
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\MSACCESS.EXE\")
'MS One Note
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\OneNote.exe\")
'MS Outlook
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\OUTLOOK.EXE\")
'PowerPoint
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\powerpnt.exe\")
'MS Word
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\Winword.exe\")
'WordPad
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\WORDPAD.EXE\")
'Write
MsgBox WSHShell.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\WRITE.EXE\")

So you can simply test out other application by using the appropriate executable or use regedit navigate to the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths” key and review the list of application present on your system.

But as you can see, with but 3 little lines, we can have a flexible way to get the path to our executable. No more guessing, no more messing!

Looking for a way to do the same thing in a bat file?!

Don’t worry, you can do the same thing using a bat file, below is an example

@echo off
REM Great reference on REG QUERY
REM 	https://www.robvanderwoude.com/regsearch.php
REM 	OR run reg query /? in a cmd window

set APPEXE=MSACCESS.EXE
set KEY_NAME=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\
set FULL_KEY="%KEY_NAME%%APPEXE%"

FOR /F "skip=2 tokens=2,*" %%A IN ('REG QUERY %FULL_KEY% /ve') DO set "exePath=%%B"
ECHO %exePath%