You don't provide much information.  A 173 error means that the program CEESECS was not found.  Is your code issuing  call to it?  Typically calls to CEE modules like this are calls to IBM Language Environment (LE) functions in an IBM mainframe environment.

On you case the module in question is trying to convert a timestamp to a number of seconds.

Is your program a mainframe program running within Enterprise Server?

Have you Configured Enterprise Server for LE Support?

Ok will try and ask each question separately.

Using PE (personal edition) on Windows 10 with VS 2019.

the only  way i know to access my files, is to use the full path which a lot of fixed coding, and is not flexible, for portability, to say the least.

Now i basically have about 50 different files, so i want VS to find the file, by just using,

SELECT FILENAME ASSING TO "FILENAME" ORG .....

using the appropriate filename

ok so this is what i found out so far.

Say i have 1 input file, and 2 output file in my program pgm.cbl.

Now for the input file so far i needed to enter the complete path as 

    Select input-file assign to "c:\\date\\inputfile" org is ....

As i said that works. Now the output file i can either use same path or  just enter the 

name of the file in the path. Since the output are created from new, every time i run the program,

i found out they will be place in the Project Path so workspace\\proj-name\\bin\\c86\\debug\\

but again, if possible can i tell visual studio to go to a certain path automatically for reading 

input files and writing out put files.

CobolWiz, 

Please don't post a new question on another user's thread which cpvers a completely different topic.

I will be happy to respond to your question but please create a new thread for it.

Thanks.

if you can provide the link, would be helpful. belive stil trying to figure this out after 30 days, all i had to do, was do workarounds, but im sure there is a way, since in gnucobol, idecobol, and others its really simple, not sure why in microfocus it isnt, and if so how, still no clue.

if i can just say one thing, though im not getting any help, yet on simple questions as file access, VC compared to say ibm z, where i couldnt even get access, is at least better, but whenever i get stuck, since im not getting any answers here, i quickly do some hack to get it working, until i eventually either figure it out myself, or by some grace of god, i get an answer from one of the experts here. At least with VC you an get a trial, and it works right away.