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Much more valuable is not to show any dialog at all and not to ask them to make a choice about whether they want to see it, and just have the program do the right thing.

Last thing I want to see from an application is a modal dialog telling me that the app just did what I told it to.

I asked the Embarcadero IDE team and they said "no". 😈

One of the things that really annoy me is when applications don't allow me quick access to the file I just saved/exported/created/generated/print to pdf... Examples: Save attachment from Outlook, Save as in Word, Excel - in these cases and many more you need to manually go and locate the file you just saved. Annoying. I'm thinking of redesigning my message for any file created with my application. Right now I have a few different messages using ShowMessage, like 'Action executed.', 'Done', 'File saved.', 'File copied', 'Project summary saved as PDF.' and others - all related to files begin saved - a mess. I'm thinking of having a new message form with button 'Locate file' so that any file generated from my application is accessible right away. How do others deal with this? I'm interested in any suggestions on design, maybe extending my initial idea to something even more useful. Thanks!

Sure, if you ask for an audit, then you want to see the outcome no matter what. But a program that yaps when it manages the to successfully save a file is poor UI. In fact, I've never ever seen such a program.

That depends: A transient message is fine, a persistent one that I have to click to get rid of it, can be annoying. If it provides the additional options you propose, it might be less annoying. But that's a matter of taste.

In case anyone wonders, here is the original "study": https://stripe.com/files/reports/the-developer-coefficient.pdf Sure, this PowerPoint has nice colours and everything, but I really don't know what to make of things like (emphasis by me)

Who sweeps your office floor? :)