How To Download a File Without Prompting (244757)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 4.0
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 4.01
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 4.01 SP1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 4.01 SP2
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 5
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 5.01
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 5.5
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 6.0
This article was previously published under Q244757

SUMMARY

The WebBrowser control and Internet Explorer have Save and Save As options that can be used to save files using the ExecWB command. However, this involves prompting from the user. There is no way to suppress this prompt. To save files to the hard-disk without prompting, use the URLDownloadToFile API from URLMON.

MORE INFORMATION

The declaration for URLDownloadToFile is as follows: 
Private Declare Function URLDownloadToFile Lib "urlmon" Alias _
"URLDownloadToFileA" (ByVal pCaller As Long, ByVal szURL As String, ByVal _
szFileName As String, ByVal dwReserved As Long, ByVal lpfnCB As Long) As Long

The function can be called as follows: 
returnValue = URLDownloadToFile(0, "http://www.microsoft.com/ms.htm", _
"c:\ms.htm", 0, 0)
Note that when downloading HTML files, embedded content like images and objects will not be downloaded.

REFERENCES

URL Monikers Functions
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:7/1/2004
Keywords:kbhowto kbURLMon kbWebBrowser KB244757
©2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.