About 'writing to files' and user permissions

Question

I'm working on a VB.NET (2010) project that will need to write text files to the end user's computer. I have read online that due to some user's security settings, that the safest place to write files to is the Application Data folder.

But what I would like to do (if possible) is allow the user to select where they want the files written to, via a SaveToFile dialog (I am using a SaveFileDialog in combination with My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText).

So my question is... if I use a SaveFileDialog (as opposed to saving a file without using a dialog), does that mean that my files will always be written to wherever the user selects?

Or is it possible that the user could select a location (ie their "desktop"), and it would not write the file there, due to their security settings? (UAC, Firewall, etc).

If the latter is possible, is there anything I can suggest to the user that they can do that would enable my program to write files to wherever they select, and it would work 100% of the time?

Like maybe... if they right-click on my program's exe file and go to Properties > Security, and make sure the 'Write' permission is allowed, will that do the trick? Or is there more to it than that?

And does it mke any difference whether or not they are logged into their computer as "admin"?

I've read a lot of conflicting things about all of this online, so I'm just trying to getting a better understanding of it all so that I know how to proceed.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The [Save As] dialog will only let the users select a folder they have read and write acceess to and that is done for you by the Operating system . So that is the best option in my openion