To know which file was opened by an application.

[yjoo9317]

Hi, For example, I am trying to know when I opened, say,'example.doc' word file or 'example.pdf' file. I know msword or acrobat is running... But how can we know which file was opened by msword or acrobat. FileSytemWatcher looks like responding on only the events which changed file content. Reading a file isn't an event reported by the watcher. Process gave me module name but not the target file(doc or pdf file name). Maybe I am missing some user32 functions. But at this point, I don't know how to retrieve that information. Many thanks in adance, yjoo.

[malharone]

FileSytemWatcher is watching for changes. When you open a file, the OS puts a virtual lock on the file but does actually modify the file. But when a file is saved, the FSW will trigger the modify event. - Malhar

[yjoo9317]

Thanks for reply... Yes,I know we can detect any changes if made to a file. In case of pdf file, The file will unlikely change. What I want is that, if I know msword or acrobat(these are examples) is running, then I want to know which file was opened by the application. Thanks..

[Dave Kreskowiak]

There is no easy little API call to make. This will require a black belt in Windows internals. Not all expose an API to tell you what files that app has open, and most apps don't expose any kind of API at all. You'd have to enumerate the handles of the process you're interested in, be it Word or Acrobat Reader. The problem is this technique is not documented anywhere, source code for it is very sparse, and it's all written in C++. You can find an example buried in the source for a Task Manager Extension, found right here[^] on CodeProject. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome