Hi everybody,

I am trying to build a standalone presentation on CD which will serve as menu-launcher for Excel files. My first try was to put name of .xls file-to-be-opened in the Url field in Character panel for every item on my list. This actualy worked with two problems:

1. .xls file opens in a weird Explorer-Excel hybrid window (title bar says Internet Explorer, but you can have all the Excel menus-tools and functions-sums keep working too). I only wonder what would happen if the user had only NNavigator or any other browser? Would they merge so succesfully with Excel or Excel Viewer which will be available to install?

2. .xls opens sometime in front, some times behind the projector (I read in this forum that there is "topmost" tool from Northern Codeworks but I still haven't tried it).

Second try was to make buttons instead of plain text and use FSCommand to launch files. I tried virtualy every example of script I found here and on other Flash sites with no success. I am runing Flash 5 on XP, and I am not big expert in Actionscript, but code doesn't seem so complicated. Here is what I tried:

on (release) {
fscommand ("exec", "filename.xls");

and:

fscommand ("exec", "start" add Chr(9) add "filename.xls");
fscommand ("exec", "cmd" add Chr(9) add "/c" add Chr(9) add "filename.xls")

and:

fscommand ("exec", "start\t" + "filename.xls");
fscommand ("exec", "cmd\t/c\t" + "filename.xls");

My .xls file is on the same directory as the proyector so no need for the specific path, no?


Third try was to use 3rd party tools. I started with Flash Command Tools ( http://flashtools.net/ ), but still nothing. I can make it work for .txt or .pdf files but with Excel... no way!!! I am pretty sure I got that code right, otherwise it wouldn't work with .txt or .pdf, right?

fscommand ("exec", "ftoolapp.exe\tfilename.txt"); ... works, but:

fscommand ("exec", "ftoolapp.exe\tfilename.xls"); ... doesn't!!!


Finaly I managed to do it with Flashgeek ( http://www.flashgeek.com ). Excel files open with no delay in proper Excel window as I want them to. The only problem, if I got it right, is that it needs separate flashgeek.exe and .txt for every Excel file I want to launch, and I have almost 30 so it will be pretty chaotic CD...

Well, sorry for making it such a long story... Hope somebody have any suggestion to help me solve this, at least until I can afford to by one of those tools who "do it all". People around this forum speak very well about SWF Studio (Northcode: congrats!), hope to try it one day!

Thanks in advance, this is realy a great place to learn...

DD