How can I use the common Save As dialog from VBScr

Question

I'd like to have my VBScript display the Windows Save As dialog box, but I could not find out how to do it.

Using this code:

Dim sfd
Set sfd = CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog")
sfd.ShowOpen

I can get an Open dialog, but there is no ShowSave method for this object (as there seems to be for a similar object in Visual Basic non-script).

I searched StackOverflow and googled for "[vbscript] save dialog" (and with "Windows Script Host"), but I only found threads about accessing common dialogs from web pages and a solution for the BrowseForFolder dialog and nothing really about calling the Save dialog.

Actually, I can use the Open dialog for my purpose, because all I need is a file name... but as I'd like to save something to the selected path, a "Save As" in the title bar of the dialog would be more appropriate.

Answer 1

If you have some degree of control over the systems on which you'll be deploying this, and can be reasonably certain that they have either Visual Studio or Microsoft HTML Help installed, you can use code like the following:

function filedialog(filt, def, title, save)
    set dialog = CreateObject("MSComDlg.CommonDialog")
    dialog.MaxFileSize = 256
    if filt = "" then
        dialog.Filter = "All Files (*.*)|*.*"
    else
        dialog.Filter = filt
    end if
    dialog.FilterIndex = 1
    dialog.DialogTitle = title
    dialog.InitDir = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders("MyDocuments")
    dialog.FileName = ""
    if save = true then
        dialog.DefaultExt = def
        dialog.Flags = &H800 + &H4
        discard = dialog.ShowSave()
    else
        dialog.Flags = &H1000 + &H4 + &H800
        discard = dialog.ShowOpen()
    end if
    filedialog = dialog.FileName
end function

Also, adapting one of the other answers to this question into VBScript code (thanks @oddacorn!), you should add this function if you aren't reasonably certain that your users will have VS or HTML Help. Call this function on program startup. Don't worry if you already have the key; in that case, this has no effect. This should work on a standard user account without admin rights.

'Make the MSComDlg.CommonDialog class available for use. Required for filedialog function.
function registerComDlg
    Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
    objRegistry.CreateKey &H80000001, "Software\CLASSES\Licenses\4D553650-6ABE-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905"
    objRegistry.SetStringValue &H80000001, "Software\CLASSES\Licenses\4D553650-6ABE-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905", "", "gfjmrfkfifkmkfffrlmmgmhmnlulkmfmqkqj"
end function

Note that I adapted the filedialog function from the "View Source" of the VBScript code in the HTML here; on modern web browsers, it appears that the HTML they use to render the code samples doesn't display correctly (tested on IE 8 and Chrome). But fortunately the code is still there in the View Source.

I found one thing that was critical to making this work on Windows 7 (SP1, fully patched); you must set dialog.MaxFileSize = 256 or you will get a run-time error.

That is, the following code fails on Windows 7 SP1, but probably works on older versions of Windows:

Set x = CreateObject("MSComDlg.CommonDialog")
x.ShowSave

Answer 2

The secret to using the common dialog from VBScript (or VBA or JScript, for that matter) is that you have to have its license installed on your machine. Certain development tools, such as Visual Basic 6, will install the license, but it's also installed by the free Microsoft HTML Help Editor (this is a pretty old app). The interesting thing is that if you install and then uninstall the HTML Help Editor, it leaves the Common Dialog License in place. For this reason I would consider the license to be freely available and so will include the registry entry it creates here in my answer:

In HKLM\Software\CLASSES\Licenses\4D553650-6ABE-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905, set the (Default) entry to gfjmrfkfifkmkfffrlmmgmhmnlulkmfmqkqj.

Once that's in place, you can create these dialogs from within a VBScript using code like this:

Set objDialog = CreateObject("MSComDlg.CommonDialog")

To launch a file save dialog, use the ShowSave method as in this code:

objDialog.ShowSave

Of course this object has a bunch of other methods and properties, and you'll probably want to configure the appropriate properties before launching the dialog. For example, you can set the file filter so only certain file extensions are shown in the dialog. There's a nice reference to the control on the MSDN site here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa259661%28v=vs.60%29.aspx.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.