Browse to exe and create shortcut

Question

3.50/5 (4 votes)

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What I desire to do is that in a click of a button the user gets to choose executable file to which he wants to create a shortcut.

For example we have the game Doom 3 in the folder "c:\games\doom3\doom.exe"
He would then pick the executable, click on OK, then in the form click on "save", and a shortcut to that executable would appear in the folder "c:\shortcuts\"

I lurked around for a while and found a sample code in how to create a shortcut but I have no idea how I'm going to do it just like I explained above.

C#

WshShell shell = new WshShell();

            IWshShortcut shortcut = (IWshShortcut)shell.CreateShortcut(@"D:\shotcut.lnk");

            shortcut.TargetPath = Application.ExecutablePath;
            //shortcut.IconLocation = 'Location of  iCon you want to set";

            // add Description of Short cut
            shortcut.Description = "Any Description here ";

            // save it / create
            shortcut.Save();

I also tried this code and it would give an exception on "shortcut.Save", is it because I'm using a 64 bit system?

Thanks in advance.

Posted 28-Jan-13 5:00am

Steven Borges

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Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Jan-13 11:07am

What exception?
—SA

Steven Borges 28-Jan-13 11:10am

FileNotFound.
That sample creates a shortcut for the application, it's just a test, it doesn't point to any file, so I dunno why it doesn't work.

CHill60 28-Jan-13 11:14am

Have you built your test app ? As it stands you're trying to create a shortcut to the test application you're running. If the exe doesn't exist you'll get the exception you mention

Steven Borges 28-Jan-13 11:19am

Oh yeah that must be the reason, I haven't built it yet, that solves one of my questions.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Jan-13 11:21am

OK, this is more then enough to find out the fix. File is not found — find it.
—SA

2 solutions

Solution 1

Hey Steve,
Try giving it a real absolute path (to a real file)

Cheers,
Edo

Posted 28-Jan-13 5:45am

Joezer BH

Updated 28-Jan-13 6:13am

v2

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CHill60 · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-28T06:02:00

Quote:
I haven't built it yet, that solves one of my questions

Following on from that I'm guessing the other question is how to cater for the user behaviour you described.
Add an openFileDialog to your form and then in your save button have something similar to

if (this.openFileDialog1.ShowDialog(this) != DialogResult.OK)
	return;
string f = openFileDialog1.FileName;
WshShell shell = new WshShell();
IWshShortcut shortcut = (IWshShortcut)shell.CreateShortcut(@"C:\shotcut.lnk");
shortcut.TargetPath = f;
shortcut.Description = "Any Description here ";
shortcut.Save();

There are other ways (e.g. using methods on the openFileDiaglog itself) so this is not necessarily the best way but it should give you a starter