Difference between revisions of "Special folders"

Revision as of 14:04, 9 November 2005

There are numerous ways to get "special" paths in windows. You can read them directly from the registry, but this is not recommended. You can also get a few select ones by reading the environment variables, but again, these are not guaranteed. The proper way is to use the SHGetSpecialFolderLocation() function.

Private Declare Function SHGetSpecialFolderLocation Lib "shell32" _
 (ByVal hwndOwner As Long, ByVal nFolder As Long, pidl As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function SHGetPathFromIDList Lib "shell32" Alias "SHGetPathFromIDListA" _
 (ByVal pidl As Long, ByVal pszPath As String) As Long

Private Const ERROR_SUCCESS = 0
Private Const MAX_LENGTH = 260

Public Function GetSpecialFolder(ByVal CSIDL As Long) As String
Dim sPath As String
Dim pidl As Long

  'Get the ID list form the Path ID
  If SHGetSpecialFolderLocation(0, CSIDL, pidl) = ERROR_SUCCESS Then
    'Allocate the space for the path
    sPath = Space$(MAX_LENGTH)
    'Get the real path form the ID list
    If SHGetPathFromIDList(ByVal pidl, ByVal sPath) Then
      'Strip off the trailing null characters
      GetSpecialFolder = Left$(sPath, InStr(sPath, Chr$(0)) - 1)
      If Right(GetSpecialFolder, 1) <> "\" Then GetSpecialFolder = GetSpecialFolder & "\"
    End If
  End If
End Function

CSIDL folder values

The values for various folders are as follows:

See also

• Earlsoft API page
• MSDN page