hi paszt thks a lot for the reply...ya i had tried this thing and it worked even...but it really takes a lot of time to open the file...isn't there any other way that i can open the file in less time...n other thing i will like to know is that how can i check that if the associated executable or say, program to open any particular file is installed on the system. like for e.g. how can i check that if microsoft word is installed on the system before i could attempt to open some doc file.