Open text file and program shortcut in a Windows batch file

Don't put quotes around the name of the file that you are trying to open; start "myfile.txt" opens a new command prompt with the title myfile.txt, while start myfile.txt opens myfile.txt in Notepad. There's no easy solution in the case where you want to start a console application with a space in its file name, but for other applications, start "" "my file.txt" works.

This would have worked too. The first quoted pair are interpreted as a window title name in the start command.

start "" "myfile.txt"
start "" "myshortcut.lnk"

I was able to figure out the solution:

start notepad "myfile.txt"
"myshortcut.lnk"
exit