Synchronous execution of command

I am using the Shell command to start a batch file; however I want to wait for the process to complete before moving on to the next line of code. How can I do this?

Find the Batch process, and wait till it stops, or make the batch file output a file (echo Finished > %windir%\temp\finished.txt) and then delete that file

Can you show me how? Does it have something to do w/ the task number returned by the Shell function? I don't want to output a file, because the program could execute concurrently on multiple machines (it is a software audit program that runs on multiple machines on our network). Thank you!

put this code in a bas module;

Code:

---


Const INFINITE = -1&
Const SYNCHRONIZE = &H100000
Declare Function WaitForSingleObject Lib "kernel32" _
  (ByVal hHandle As Long, ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long) As Long

Declare Function CloseHandle Lib "kernel32" _
  (ByVal hObject As Long) As Long
 
Declare Function OpenProcess Lib "kernel32" _
  (ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, _
    ByVal dwProcessId As Long) As Long

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and use this to run the bat file

Code:

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dim lngtask as long
dim phandle as long
dim ret as long
  itask = Shell("mybat.bat")
    pHandle = OpenProcess(SYNCHRONIZE, False, itask)
    ret = WaitForSingleObject(pHandle, INFINITE)
    ret = CloseHandle(pHandle)

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Thank you both very much for the *quick* replies!!!