Thanks Rick, I initially tried with and without quotes and it didn't work. I
paid no mind to the error as I thought had to do with the syntax but I can
see now that the application is not listed in my path statement and therein
lies my problem. I will have to look for an alternative solution but thanks
for confirming the syntax.

PJ

"Rick Rothstein" wrote:

Use quote marks around the argument...

RetVal = Shell("CALC.EXE", 1)

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"PJ" wrote in message
...
Is it possible to launch an external program using VBA without specifying
the
application path? I want to launch a program where the location of the
executable will vary based on the version installed on the users machine.
The executable is the same regardless of the version installed and it
appears
there are at least four versions (and four locations) that could be
present
on the users machine.

So instead of this:
RetVal = Shell("C:\WINDOWS\CALC.EXE", 1)

is there any way to achieve something like this:
RetVal = Shell(CALC.EXE, 1)

.