How can I correctly creat this shorcut file with its arguments?

Question

I want to create a shortcut file to a PDF document with arguments, so that when I double click it on Explorer, it will open the pdf file in my default PDF viewer at the page specified.

I can create such a shortcut in Explorer, by right clicking the PDF file then:

• Clicking on "Create Shortcut"
• Opening the properties dialog for the file
• Replacing the entire string present in the target field with PDFXEdit /a page=87 "C:\temp\sample.pdf"

I would like a PowerShell means of doing the above, I tried:

set-shorcut -Path 'c:\temp\sample.pdf' -Arguments 'PDFXEdit /a page=87' | get-shortcut

WindowStyle : 1
Path        : C:\temp\sample.lnk
IconPath    : ,0
Hotkey      :
Arguments   : PDFXEdit /a page=87
Target      : C:\temp\sample.pdf

The shortcut does get created but when I look at the target field for the shortcuts file's properties dialog, its value is:

"C:\temp\sample.pdf" PDFXEdit /a page=87

and executing it does open the file with the default pdf programme but not at page 87.

It seems that the expected value is PDFXEdit /a page=87 "C:\temp\sample.pdf" yet I cant seem to do this in PowerShell. Is it not possible for .lnk files, to just attempt to pass a file path and some arbitrary argument to the current 'open with...' pdf programme??

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

---

The code for set-shortcut is:

function Set-Shortcut{
param(
  [Parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)]
  [String]$Path = $pwd,

  [Parameter(Mandatory, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName, ValueFromPipeline)]
  [String]
  $Target,

  [Parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)]
  [String]
  $Arguments,

  [Parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)]
  [String]
  $IconPath
)
process{
    if (-not(get-item -path $path).PSIsContainer){Write-Error 'Only directories allowed as destination Path' -ErrorAction Stop}
    $path = join-path -path $path -ChildPath ((get-item -path $target).BaseName + '.lnk')
    $WshShell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
    $Shortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut($Path)
    $Shortcut.TargetPath = $Target

    Switch ($PSBoundParameters.keys){
    'Arguments' {$Shortcut.Arguments = $Arguments}
    'IconPath'  {$Shortcut.IconLocation = $IconPath}
    }
    $Shortcut.Save()
    return (Get-Item $Path)
    }
}

Answer 1

When you manually create the shortcut you then edit it to completely change what the shortcut points to. Specifically you change it to point at the PDFXEdit application, with arguments including the path to the file and page number. So when you create the shortcut in PowerShell you would still want to replicate those changes.

set-shorcut -Path PDFXEdit -Arguments '/a page=87 "c:\temp\sample.pdf"' | get-shortcut