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OFF2000: Macro to Get Windows and Windows System Folders

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This article was previously published under Q200123

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Summary

The Microsoft Windows operating system provides two routines that can be called by Microsoft Office 2000 programs to get the \Windows and the \Windows\System folders.

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More information

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. When Windows starts, it sets a special environment variable called WINDIR with the path from which Windows was started. You can use the following macro instruction to post the Windows folder to a message box. 
MsgBox Environ$("WINDIR")
However, there is no argument to return the \System folder when using this method. The following examples use Windows API calls to return both the \Windows and \Windows\System folders.

The following macro example retrieves the \Windows and \Windows\System folders and prints them to the Debug (Immediate) window in the Visual Basic for Applications Editor. 
' Place these declarations in the General Declarations procedure of a
' Visual Basic for Applications module.

   Declare Function GetWindowsDirectoryA Lib "Kernel32" _
   (ByVal lpBuffer As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As Long
   Declare Function GetSystemDirectoryA Lib "Kernel32" _
   (ByVal lpBuffer As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As Long
Create a macro and place the following code into the routine. 
   Sub GetOSDirs()
      Dim sBuf As String
      Dim cSize As Long
      Dim retval As Long
      sBuf = String(255, 0)
      cSize = 255
      ' Get Windows Directory.
      retval = GetWindowsDirectoryA(sBuf, cSize)
      sBuf = Left(sBuf, retval)
      Debug.Print sBuf
      ' Get System Directory.
      sBuf = String(255, 0)
      cSize = 255
      retval = GetSystemDirectoryA(sBuf, cSize)
      sBuf = Left(sBuf, retval)
      Debug.Print sBuf
   End Sub
If the Debug window is not visible, then while in the Visual Basic for Applications Editor, on the View menu, click Immediate Window (or Debug Window).

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Keywords: KB200123, kbhowto

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Article Info
Article ID : 200123
Revision : 7
Created on : 10/10/2006
Published on : 10/10/2006
Exists online : False
Views : 459