How can Excel VBA open file using default application

Question

I want an Excel spreadsheet that has a file path and name in column A. When a macro is run, let's say the file specified in A1 should be opened on the user's machine. The file could be .doc, .xls, .txt, etc.... rather than my vba needing to know the full path the to application, how could I have the vba tell the machine "please open this file and use your application associated with the extension" ?

I have already found this to work with the full path:

dblShellReturned = Shell("C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe myfile.txt, vbNormalFocus) 

how could I get it to work with something like:

dblShellReturned = Shell("myfile.txt", vbNormalFocus) ' how do I get this to work 

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

This works for me in Excel & Word

Sub runit()    Dim Shex As Object    Set Shex = CreateObject("Shell.Application")    tgtfile = "C:\Nax\dud.txt"    Shex.Open (tgtfile) End Sub 

or ... as per Expenzor's comment below

CreateObject("Shell.Application").Open("C:\Nax\dud.txt")