Hello all, I'm new to the group so I hope this isn't too redundant of a

question.
I'm encountering a problem when attempting to call an external program
from an Excel macro. The macro runs through a variety of formatting
routines and then saves the file in .prn format to pass to the dos
program (this program generates a fish population estimate and is
unfortunately, to complex to simply write within the code.) I'm at the
point where I need to call up the program. I used the shell procedure
to access the dos program .exe file. It does access the program (I can
see the start screen flash) but then closes out. I tried writing a
batch file and accessing that from the macro..same result. The only
time I could get it to work, is when the batch file was misdirected
(another story) and had to search for the execution file. It found the
file (or rather a copy of it in another directory) and things worked
fine from there. Any thoughts?
thanks in advance..
-Chris.

note: I posted this in the excel vba group as well, but that group
seems to have low activity,
my appoligies for any inconvience caused by the crossposting.