How to open a .pdf document in Visual Basic

Open it in a browser control.

Its a COM control down as 'Microsoft Internet Controls' or Interop.SHDocVw.dll

Greetings, CirrusIT.

If by "open a .PDF document within Visual Basic" means to have the item open in a VB form, then Kinger247 has already given you the answer.  If instead you meant that you need a way to open a PDF document from within VB, but not in a VB form, then another option would be to use the Shell command and let Windows open the PDF in Acrobat Reader.  

Cheers!

sorry CirrusIT, thought you where using .net,
the answer I gave is till the same just not the Interop.bit ;)

http://www.nero.com

Make Bootable CD (easyest way)

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat/sdk/index.html;jsessionid=AD81669D7C47F56EB1F90416B99DE97D#fs

Download the help file. ftp://ftp6.nero.com/tutorials/nero7prem/data/Nero7_Data_chm_tut_eng.zip

Sorry for my post above i writed in the wrong post.

Good advice anyway :)

Crikey, thanks for all the responses, even though some are a little off topic : )

I dont want to open the document in Visual Basic (i.e. in a form) i wish to open to the document in Adobe Acrobat reader but when i try the Shell ("Directory") command it errors saying invalid call or arguement.

Ill give jkaios code a try but the directory and file name is built up of Variables - 3 in total

DIRECTORY - contains the location
DATE - the date of the file
NUMBER - unique id

DATE and NUMBER make up the file name, so how do i write this command line so that is uses the variables?

oShell.Execute("C:\Temp\myFile.PDF", me.hWnd)

Come to think of it i will have to do some TRIMM 'ing functions on the variables to make sure there are no unneccesary spaces....

Many thanks

JC.

CirrusIT, I don't think anyone has been off topic ...

>>I dont want to open the document in Visual Basic (i.e. in a form) i wish to open to the document in Adobe Acrobat reader but when i try the Shell ("Directory") command it errors saying invalid call or arguement.

your original post was >How do you open a .PDF document within Visual Basic?

Um......i was referring to NERO burning CD comment....

perhaps should have been clearer in making that joke....

ah, I see .. , my apologises too :)

If your having problems with your file name, can you give an example it ?

Like : C:\Temp\20061122 12345.PDF

No worries matey, at the moment my Shell command looks like this:

Shell("C:\Temp\List Building.pdf")

This was just to prove to myself that you can open a PDF document in Visual Basc, just to basically load a .PDF document at the moment when the code hits a certain point.

-Background-
I have a form which the user can press SHIFT + F8 (keypressed function) to which will bring up a validation message and ask if they wish to load the scanned document selected.  

Once the IF statements check that no fields are missing / blank otherwise there's no point - if they are not blank it will then connect to a SQL database to retrieve the values to build the DIRECTORY, NUMBER & DATE values, then I wish to build the load .PDF line after the values have been retrieved - :

The naming convention of the file is : DDMMYYYYnnnnnnn

nnnnnnn being the unique id variable.

So DIRECTORY will = "C:\Temp\"
    DATE will = "12/12/2006"         - Although the alarm bells of doom are ringing in my head with this one cus of the \ \ charactors, not quite sure whether its possible to get rid of them.
    NUMBER will = "1234567"

Then have to add ".PDF" to the end of the statement i presume.

JKAIOS solution looks very thorough- problem being that I cant build another form with command button -  i need to load the document in the MODULE code once i have performed the validation mentioned above (checking for blanks and such) can this be done?

Many thanks for your help

JC.

After a bit of tinkering this is how I action without a command click:

Dim LoadDoc
LoadDoc = ("C:\Temp\MyFile.PDF")
oShell.Execute (LoadDoc)
MsgBox oShell.ErrorMsg

Just now need to figure out the syntax for using variables in the string, and how to remove the '/'s from a date field.......

For the people looking to remove the '/' from dates this how to do it:

Dim SDay, SMonth, SYear, FileDate 'Document properties

SDay = Day(YourDate)
SMonth = Month(YourDate)
SYear = Year(YourDate)
FileDate = (SDay & SMonth & SYear)

Will add the syntax for using variables in a string to this thread when ive figured it out for other peoples reference.

However the original query was solved by the marvellous post by JKAIOS - your a legend, much obliged.

Cheers,

JC

The missing piece of the puzzle, this is how you declare variables and use them in a string:

VarNumber = Trim(VarNumber)
           
LoadDoc = (Directory & FileDate & VarNumber & ".PDF")
   
oShell.Execute (LoadDoc)