DDEInitiate and the Topic and Service Names

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Question:

I'm trying to get Adobe Acrobat Reader to work with DDE commands.

I have the following syntax:

DDEChan = DDEInitiate("Acrord32", "System")

result = DDEExecute(DDEChan, '[CloseAllDocs()]')

where "Acrord32" is the name of the Acrobat Reader EXE, and I'm just guessing at "System".

Answer:

1. The app name specified in the DDEInitiate docs should really be the "service name". For Adobe Acrobat reader, the exename is "Acrord32" but the "service name" is "Acroview".

2. Both the "service name" and the "topic" need to come from the application's documentation. In the case of Acrobat Reader, the topic is "Control".

The following executes without error:

DDEChan = DDEInitiate("Acrord32", "Control")

where "Control" is the "topic". In fact, DDEInitiate returns a 1. But the methods we try to pass to the open channel will not work correctly.

Plug the "service name" of "Acroview" into parameter1 and the DDE methods executed thereafter should work, so the correct code is:

DDEChan = DDEInitiate("Acroview", "Control")
result = DDEExecute(DDEChan, '[CloseAllDocs()]')

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Article ID:   W14579

Filename:   Topic and Service Names.txt