In fact, sometimes your script is intended for users who might not even know how to run a script from the command line! Wouldn’t it be great if you could just have windows display a dialog box to prompt the user for a file to chose as a argument for your script?

Well, you CAN! The following script is a sample of what you can do with the Windows Common Dialog box to enable the user to more easily utilize your scripts– all without knowing about the command line!

There are a few key pieces of the script I want to call out before we dig in and start running the code though. First, the object that preforms the magic here is UserAccounts.CommonDialog, the filter options on the dialog in the drop down to select the file types to display in the browser dialog is the line with .Filter property in it, The initial Directory the dialog uses is specified in the .InitialDirectory Property, and finally the default selection of that drop down is specified in the .FilterIndex Property. Take a look at the code and see how easy it is.

 Option Explicit
Dim ObjFSO, InitFSO

‘ create an instance of the File Browser
Set ObjFSO = CreateObject(“UserAccounts.CommonDialog”)

‘setup the File Browser specifics
ObjFSO.Filter = “VBScripts|*.vbs|Text Files|*.txt|All Files|*.*”
ObjFSO.FilterIndex = 3
ObjFSO.InitialDir = “c:\”

‘ show the file browser and return the selection (or lack of) to InitFSO
InitFSO = ObjFSO.ShowOpen

If InitFSO = False Then
    Wscript.Echo “Script Error: Please select a file!”
    Wscript.Quit
Else
    WScript.Echo “You selected the file: ” & ObjFSO.FileName
End If

Enjoy!