VBA - Shelling Microsoft Edge and other Protocol Activation

Just a quickie, Microsoft Edge is a new generation windows app and is activated using a protocol. So from the command line we go

start microsoft-edge:http://www.cnn.com

And this launches Microsoft Edge with a new tab with CNN web page inside. But tring to shell to this using VBA gives the error file not found. What is required is to add the command specifier C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe which is also set as the environment variable comspec. So now we can shell from VBA if we precede with the comspec thus ...

Sub ShellMicrosoftEdge()
    VBA.Shell Environ$("comspec") & " /c start microsoft-edge:http://www.cnn.com"
End Sub

Python code

For a bonus we can read this trick across to Python code. Again add the comspec ...

import os 
from subprocess import Popen

browserJob=Popen([os.environ['comspec'],'/c','start' , 'microsoft-edge:http://www.cnn.com' ])

Thoughts

As these new activation protocols proliferate with Window 8 onwards apps, don't worry it is still possible to launch/shell in a traditional manner. The links below give some further reading.

Links

• Jerry Nixon on Windows_ Walkthrough_ using Windows 8 Custom Protocol Activation
• How to script Microsoft's Edge browser _ ITworld
• windows 10 - How to open URL in Microsoft Edge from the command line_ - Stack Overflow