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I have a lesson notebook for a class I am teaching. I'd like to separate the lesson content and the practice problems. Students are using the CDFPlayer program, not Mathematica.

I created a button that will open a specific notebook…

Button[
  "open",
  NotebookOpen[FileNameJoin[{NotebookDirectory[ButtonNotebook[]], "sample.nb"}]]]

and this works fine in the CDFPlayer.

However, selecting a "random" question from a list of files doesn't. Something in my code doesn't work in the free player. (The same code works fine in Mathematica)

This is what I tried:

Button[
  "open",
  NotebookOpen[RandomChoice[FileNames[{"*.nb"}, {NotebookDirectory[ButtonNotebook[]]}]]]]

I'm wondering if someone could offer a suggestion? I'd like a button that when clicked, will open a notebook from a folder of practice problems, and work in the CDFPlayer.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

I see (and appreciate) the feedback that the free CDFPlayer is NOT able to open files. So that answers my question...

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    $\begingroup$ You can't use free CDF to open files. mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/8929/… if that is what you are trying to do. You'd need the pro CDF for that. $\endgroup$
    – Nasser
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 7:45
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    $\begingroup$ I don't know much about what is OK on the free CDFPlayer, but maybe FileNames[{"*.nb"} is disallowed because it looks as if you were fishing for what files are available. Try Button["open", Print @ RandomChoice[FileNames[{"*.nb"}, {NotebookDirectory[ButtonNotebook[]]}]]]. It might give you more insight. $\endgroup$
    – m_goldberg
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 8:31
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for those comments, and that information. It makes sense that CDFPlayer would not be able to "fish" for file names and open one. I'd still like to find a solution that would choose a question at random, but I can simply link to the files. So my question is answered…. $\endgroup$
    – Tom De Vries
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 9:29

1 Answer 1

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HI… I found I could get this to work using a SUPPLIED list of questions. I WILL know ahead of time how many questions there are, so I didn't need to "fish" for the file names.

I just put the questions in a folder with nice sequential names, Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and used the following (which works fine in the free CDFPlayer)

Button["open",
 NotebookOpen[
  FileNameJoin[{
    NotebookDirectory[EvaluationNotebook[]],
    "Data",
    "Questions",
    RandomChoice["Q " <> ToString[#] <> ".nb" & /@ Range[3]]}]]]
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