Alex.  Thanks for your reply. I have a comment, and question, about your answer to #2:

I store the files that are to link and open in the order form, in each customers own folder currently (literally thousands of customers and files).  It would be impractical to store them all in one folder without subfolders. I'd like to leave the files right where they are currently. There are several types of files there that I'll be accessing so I'll need to use the ShellExecute function to automatically select the program that opens the files.

Is there any reason why I cannot leave the files where they currently are?

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Reply from Alex Hedley:

You can leave them in the same place, that was just an alert native.

Have you seen this tip (/tips/access/140726-listfiles/) to list files in a folder, it's not recursive but could be amended.