Referencing a local drive for all users

[LonghronJ]

I have an app that would display images stored in a shared server. I noticed that when navigating from record to record, it takes a while to display the images. In addition, when the user goes offline, the photos would not be available. Therefore, I would like to create a procedure that would allow the user to download all the photos from the network to their local device before going offline. I suspect that I can use FileCopy method to do the job. Question is, how do I reference a local folder like My Pictures/Folder1 without having the user's name in the path. When I go to My Pictures folder and copy the path, I get \\server\user\username\My Documents\My Pictures, which means, that path would only apply to a specific user. How do I reference the exact same local location for everyone?

[rpeare]

you can create a folder if it doesn't exist and put the files there

c:\app\pictures\

Filesystemobject commands make it very easy to validate path names/create/remove etc.

[LonghronJ]

I have thought of that, creating a folder in the c: drive, but I just don't think that's a good way to organize photos in one's device. I think there's a relative path I can reference for everyone, I just haven't found what that is yet.

[rpeare]

you can capture the 'current user' of the database

http://www.techonthenet.com/access/f...urrentuser.php

You can try environ("username") to capture the current user of the machine

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Fo...orum=accessdev

and build the path from there.

[LonghronJ]

Great suggestion. environ("username") did the trick, at least on me. Hopefully it works for others. Thanks. Now I just need to be able to launch the Windows Photo Viewer, then I'm set. It's currently a challenge as it does not have a .exe file.

[InsuranceGuy]

Great suggestion. environ("username") did the trick, at least on me. Hopefully it works for others. Thanks. Now I just need to be able to launch the Windows Photo Viewer, then I'm set. It's currently a challenge as it does not have a .exe file.

I tend to create a folder "SomeAppName" in vba.environ("temp") and use that for storage as you've outlined. It's reliable and users almost always have access rights to read and write temp folders.



Jeff

[Micron]

Just in case anyone else stumbles on this thread, I think the value you were looking for is C:\Users\%USERNAME%\rest of path here. %USERNAME% is often used in batch or command files. I know a person who always used the Environ variable but had to change all his databases - something changed in the company servers, but I don't recall what. Nothing wrong with the method if it works. There is also a way to get the user's network login id and look that up in a user table for any user data. You would find the code for that posted in this forum and many other places by searching for apiGetUserName.

[InsuranceGuy]

Just in case anyone else stumbles on this thread, I think the value you were looking for is C:\Users\%USERNAME%\rest of path here. %USERNAME% is often used in batch or command files. I know a person who always used the Environ variable but had to change all his databases - something changed in the company servers, but I don't recall what. Nothing wrong with the method if it works. There is also a way to get the user's network login id and look that up in a user table for any user data. You would find the code for that posted in this forum and many other places by searching for apiGetUserName.

If taking this approach then you will want to use vba.userprofile("userprofile") type variables set by windows. See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...(v=WS.10).aspx for other environment variables managed by windows itself.

Jeff