Open Word Document From Dynamic Directory VB.Net - vb.net

Question

I have a program for which I have developed a user guide. I have placed this user guide within the project directory. I created a MenuStrip Item by which to open the user guide in Word on the user's machine. I was successfully able to do this with the following code:
Try
userGuide = MSWord.Documents.Open("C:Users\administrator\Documents\VisualStudio2010\Project3\UserGuide.doc")
MSWord.WindowState = Word.WdWindowState.wdWindowStateNormal
MSWord.Visible = True
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox("An error has prevented the document from opening. The document may not be available." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
"Please try one of the following options:" & vbCrLf & _
"- Check to see if the document is already open" & vbCrLf & _
"- Restart the program")
End Try
The problem is, the path used to open the file will not exist on the users machine. This is a standalone system, so no file share can be created in which to place the document, therefore no common path can be coded.
Is there a way to code dynamic paths? Perhaps something like:
userGuide = MSWord.Documents.Open("%windir%\UserGuide.doc")
Thanks!

Answer 1

if the document will be stored relative to the install path of the application executable, then start with the path of the exe:
Dim path As String
path = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName( _
System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase)
Dim docPath as String;
docPath = Path.Combine(path,"UserGuide.doc");