Tracking files of a particular extension

Question

I want to track the files which are opened by the user, and select them by one particular extension. If the opened file has that extension, then I want to assign it's file path to a variable for further processing. Example applications are very cpu demanding. Is there an easy, efficient way to do that?

Answer 1

System wide monitoring of file-->open events (including network drives, thumb drives, etc) would require you to write a FS filter driver.

Since you have access to the machine, and you definitely need system wide access, you could simply write a simple app that will be associated with the Powerpoint extensions, perform the copy, then open Powerpoint using the filepath as a command line argument. It would look similar to the following:

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    internal class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        { }

        [STAThread()]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length == 0)
            {
                // [ show error or print usage ]
                return;
            }

            if (!File.Exists(args[0]))
            {
                // [ show error or print usage ]
                return;
            }

            // Perform the copy
            FileInfo target = new FileInfo(args[0]);
            string destinationFilename = string.Format("X:\\ExistingFolder\\{0}", target.Name);
            File.Copy(target.FullName, destinationFilename);

            // You may need to place the filename in quotes if it contains spaces
            string targetPath = string.Format("\"{0}\"", target.FullName); 
            string powerpointPath = "[FullPathToPowerpointExecutable]";
            Process powerpointInstance = Process.Start(powerpointPath, targetPath);

            // This solution is using a wpf windows app to avoid 
            // the flash of the console window.  However if you did
            // wish to display an accumulated list then you may choose
            // to uncomment the following block to display your UI.

            /*
            Application app = new Application();
            app.MainWindow = new MainWindow();
            app.MainWindow.ShowDialog();
            app.Shutdown(0);
            */

            Environment.Exit(0);
        }
    }
}

Hope this helps.