Using DDE with Internet Explorer

Keywords: 

---

Question:

Do you have any experience of using DDE with Internet Explorer? I can get DDE to work fine with a database I run but I can't get IE to respond despite the Microsoft documentation http://channels.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/docs/tech30/dde.htm that lists the various DDE commands that Explorer should respond to. It gets as far as the DDEInitiate OK but falls over on the DDEExecute.

I have tried this with both IE3.0 under Win3.1 and IE4.0 under NT4.0 - neither work.

Here is my my sample code:

channel = DDEInitiate("Iexplore", "System")
if channel != 0
	result = DDEExecute(channel, '[WWW_OpenURL(http:\\www.windowware.com)]')
	DDETerminate(channel)
	if result == @FALSE
		Message("DDE Error", "DDEExecute Failed")
	else
		Message("DDE Operation", "Completed successfully")
		exit
	end if
else
	Message("DDE Error", "DDEInitiate Failed")
endif

exit

Answer:

The syntax is wrong. OpenURL is a topic, not a command. Use the following code:

c = DDEInitiate("Iexplore", "WWW_OpenURL")
if c != 0
result = DDEExecute(c, 'support.microsoft.com/support/search/default.asp,,0')

The 0 uses a new browser window.

And don't look at the result. It is always zero. Same with very many applications. I don't know why, since OpenURL is supposed to return -2 or -3.

---

Article ID:   W12824

Filename:   Using DDE with Internet Explorer.txt