terrypin

Thanks Alan, appreciate the time and effort! That's a good chunk of it done, all I need now is dddd I'll do some research and see if I can come up with a formula for that. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I have date strings like 03/04/09 in a text variable and want to display that as Friday 3 April 2009. But I can't use use ME Pro's attractive formatting repertoire, because incredibly there's no command for the crucial first step of getting such text for Day, Month and Year into a Date/Time variable. Or have I missed something here? I understand from Cory's comments in the thread http://pgmacros.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=3706 that this is a long-standing major flaw in ME Pro's Date/Time commands. If so, can ISS tell us if this is due to be fixed please? Meanwhile has ISS or anyone here worked through the logic and maths to derive the 'decimal date equivalent', using Day, Month & Year please? Or know what Excel's algorithm is for this, as I assume the values are identical? Of course, I could load Excel every time I want to do such a format conversion, but that truly would be a top heavy approach! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks Kevin, but both points OK. As always I left the the macro name blank, but explicitly including it makes no difference. I also tried pasting all the commands into a new macro with a new name and new activation. That fails with identical message. Edit: Pleased to report I worked around it. I pasted contents of the 'non-existent' macro (which was called 'Toggle Full Path in Titles', alias XYZ of my opening post) to a new macro called 'Toggle Path in Titles'. With the Macro Run command in the main macro changed to run that, it works OK. Can only guess it was some sort of obscure corruption? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Does this ring any bells with anyone please? I have a Macro Run command in line 3 of my main macro. It calls a macro XYZ, which most definitely exists (and runs OK when activated manually). Yet the main macro consistently fails with a message about line 3 'macro does not exist'. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Tabbing is usually the best and most reliable method in my experience. While 30-40 tabs would be tedious manually, ME handles such operations very quickly. I usually find care is needed as I tab through a freshly-opened page to ensure I don't miss the cursor's appearance. For example, I did so the first time I tried your second example, locating the nickname box. In fact it takes a mere two tabs, as shown below. Note that this is an ME Pro macro, but the differences if any will be trivial. Also note that I use Firefox, so I have to add my own waiting sub-macro as the 'Wait for the webpage' command isn't supported.) Web Site, "http://slashdot.org/login.pl?op=newuserform", using Default Web Browser Macro Run: Wait for FF web page ready Keystroke Speed: 20 milliseconds Text Type (Simulate Keystrokes): <TAB><TAB> Delay: 200 milliseconds <WEB SITE URL="http://slashdot.org/login.pl?op=newuserform" Wait="FALSE" Default_Browser="TRUE" _IGNORE="0x000C"/> <MACRO RUN Use_ID="FALSE" Name="Wait for FF web page ready" ID="-1" Wait="TRUE"/> <KEYSTROKE SPEED Delay="20"/> <TEXT TYPE Action="0" Text="<TAB><TAB>"/> <DELAY Flags="\x02" Time="200"/> An alternative technique is based on unique pixel colours, But that's not only more complex but also can be very slow. And it's just as exposed as the tab technique to changes in web page layout. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Nor me, I added them to see if either of them solved the problem. But with or without either or both of them, it persists. Could you try it please? Just create an empty folder C:\Test Folder and from Script Editor using F9 > Enter run this: Open Folder to "C:\Test Folder" // Open a folder Text Type (Simulate Keystrokes): <ALT>to // Open Folder Options Delay: 100 milliseconds Macro Return <OPEN FOLDER Path="C:\\Test Folder" _COMMENT="Open a folder"/> <TEXT TYPE Action="0" Text="<ALT>to" _COMMENT="Open Folder Options"/> <DELAY Flags="\x02" Time="100"/> <MACRO RETURN/> Here, as described, it fails to apply the keystrokes to the opened folder, but instead applies them to the Script Editor. Usually (not always) that results in the macro's Notes tab being opened and the letter 'o' entered in it. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I'm getting erratic behaviour with macros like this when I try to run them in debug mode (F9 and Enter). Open Folder to "C:\Test Folder" // Open a folder Window Activate: Test folder Wait for Window Title: Test folder Text Type (Simulate Keystrokes): <ALT>to // Open Folder Options Delay: 100 milliseconds Macro Return <OPEN FOLDER Path="C:\\Test Folder" _COMMENT="Open a folder"/> <WINDOW ACTIVATE Title="Test folder" Exact_Match="TRUE" Wildcards="FALSE" _IGNORE="0x0006"/> <WAIT FOR WINDOW TITLE Title="Test folder" Partial="FALSE" Wildcards="FALSE" Indefinite="TRUE" Hours="0" Minutes="0" Seconds="0"/> <TEXT TYPE Action="0" Text="<ALT>to" _COMMENT="Open Folder Options"/> <DELAY Flags="\x02" Time="100"/> <MACRO RETURN/> Sometimes it doesn't apply the Text Type keystrokes at all, and sometimes it applies them to the Script Editor instead of the target folder, resulting in the Notes tab being opened and sometimes getting a spurious 'o' entered. Results may vary (but are never correct) if I disable either the Activate or Wait commands. Nor does it matter whether I use Exact or Partial Match conditions. It's as if Script Editor persistently steals focus, despite the explicit commands that should prevent this. If this is a more general issue, not just confined to Open Folder, then it might explain other weird behaviour I've had when debugging. If I run from a hotkey the macro works OK, from anywhere, including Script Editor. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Seems to work OK here. I tried a couple of my web page macros that rely on my Macro Run: 'Wait for FF web page ready' and they loaded OK. Did you try Restore Keyboard & Mouse Hooks ? Presumably you've rebooted? Tried FF 3.08 in safe mode, or at least without any recently-added extensions? Kicked the CPU case? ... -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

This macro should hide Notepad and then show it again, but it fails, reporting in line 3 that the window cannot be found. Window Hide: Notepad Delay: 1 seconds Window Show: 1 seconds: Notepad Macro Return <WINDOW HIDE Option="\x01" Title="Notepad" Partial="TRUE" Wildcards="FALSE" _IGNORE="0x0006"/> <DELAY Flags="\x01" Time="1"/> <WINDOW SHOW Option="\x01" Title="Notepad" Partial="TRUE" Wildcards="FALSE" _IGNORE="0x0006"/> <MACRO RETURN/> To get correct operation it seems that although you can use the Partial option in the Hide command, in Window Show you have to specify Exact Match, like this: Window Hide: Notepad Delay: 1 seconds Window Show: 1 seconds: Untitled - Notepad Macro Return <WINDOW HIDE Option="\x01" Title="Notepad" Partial="TRUE" Wildcards="FALSE" _IGNORE="0x0006"/> <DELAY Flags="\x01" Time="1"/> <WINDOW SHOW Option="\x01" Title="Untitled - Notepad" Partial="FALSE" Wildcards="FALSE" _IGNORE="0x0006"/> <MACRO RETURN/> BTW, note the other display bug that I've reported before: the spurious appearance of the delay details from previous commands, which occurs if you have toggled between Script & Direct Editor views. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Can't remember the details but I tried it once and it failed. I'm no programmer, but I recall from subsequent research that it was probably because the size of my 'Replace' was different to my 'Find'. Hang on, I'll test it ... Yep, I just tried changing a single character and that worked OK. ME Pro opened OK and all 3 occurrences had been changed. (I changed the name of a macro, from '4 Volume Curve markers' to '4 Volume Kurve markers'.) So if you're lucky and the new key happens to be the same length it should work without fuss. But I expect that unlike me you know your way around hex editing, so you can probably do it with any size of text replacement, by altering other obscure stuff like 'checksums' etc. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks Kevin. As you see from my reply to Cory, I'd homed in on that registry key too! I'm sending you my FULL.mex file as it stands as a basis for trying to reproduce and isolate the issue. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Excellent, thanks Cory! Pending a proper fix, that's a great work-around. And more education for me, as I'd forgotten all about that 'configuration-saving' option. I did have a single ME Pro cfg file saved in early Feb, although I needed a fair number of changes to get things back to how I reckon they were last night! Needless to say, I've now re-saved that. One remaining snag is that you lose the 'Last Run Time' data, which all come up as 'Never'. Not life threatening, but I did use that occasionally to weed out ancient unused stuff. I'm not sure why that can't be preserved? Before seeing your post I'd been ploughing through the Registry. I thought I'd found a promising candidate deeply located here: HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1214440339-583907252-839522115-1008\Software\Insight Software Solutions\Macro Express 4\$Temp\Grids\Explorer\MainWin.cxMacroView\cxCatCol I exported it for safety and then changed the entry against 'Visible' from False to True, closed everything and re-booted with optimism - but still no Category! I've now seen Kevin's suggestion to delete that key, so next time this happens I'll try that, knowing I can fall back on a quick restoration - apart from Last Run Time! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

AND AGAIN! This is beginning to annoy me big time now. I think it follows certain types of crash, but can't be sure I see no comments to this thread from ISS since it was started 8 days ago? What I'm particularly keen to know is whether there is any other way to get that important Category column back, apart from using macdef.exe as Stan suggested, which means tediously re-setting all my preferences etc. Of course, it would also be good to hear that this long-standing bug has been isolated and fixed! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks, I've downloaded that. I'm looking forward to playing with it soon, but it's clear that it's a radically simplified version. Bruce stopped developing Stiletto in 1998 and used it as the embryo for Power Tools (which one of these days I'm determined to try again). But he must have subsequently pruned and simplified it and made it freeware. As an indication of relative complexity, excluding all extra INI files I've created over the years, my C:\Program Files\Stiletto folder is 3.2 MB, but C:\Program Files\stil19w is a mere 664 KB. My XP shortcut for opening Stiletto is simply "C:\Program Files\Stiletto\stiletto.exe", (including the quotes) starting in "C:\Program Files\Stiletto", with no shortcut key, and specifying a Normal window. It intermittently fails in the way I described: no bar is accessible, although the process stiletto.exe gets loaded. (And so I have to remember to use TM to close that instance before trying again.) I added 'stiletto.ini' after the executable but that seems unnecessary and makes no improvement. Similarly, the following macro is also intermittent. It seems to work when run independently, but not inside a Macro Run command: Program Launch: "stiletto.exe" (Normal) Parameters: stiletto.ini On the positive side, I'm pleased to say that I seem to be having success using your close macro, thanks. I'd been using ME Pro's Program Shut Down command, with unreliable results. -- Terry, West Sussex, UK

ME Pro consistently crashes whenever I restore a macro from the Explorer Recycle bin. After sending the automatic message and closing the errror message, I get: "Exception ListError in module macedit.exe at 00025FCA. List index out of bounds (178)." However, the macro itself does seem to get restored correctly and Explorer remains loaded, so it's no big deal. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks Cory. You're probably right in those assumptions, although I'd still like to hear from the developers on my specifics. I suspect it's some sort of legacy with Ye Olde Days of Win 95 etc to include this 'shell' in a list of 'visible windows' on a modern PC. By understanding points like this it might help me fathom some of ME Pro's occasionally mysterious behaviour! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

OK, thanks Cory. Maybe ISS could comment on why the design changed and in particular why the default is now to run the macro in ME Pro Script Editor? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Nearly. The variable goes in the SWITCH and then doesn't need to appear again. Like this: SWITCH variable %123% CASE = foo Do this END CASE CASE = bar Do this END CASE CASE = zip Do this END CASE CASE = bam Do this END CASE END SWITCH And if you wanted to OR these, it can be done neatly like this: SWITCH variable %123% CASE = foo CASE = bar CASE = zip CASE = bam Do this END CASE END SWITCH I used SWITCH/CASE for the first time yesterday and despite its initial unfamiliarity I reckon it's easier to write & understand later, and probably on average more compact than IF/END IF. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Well, it definitely doesn't work here, so there must be some difference(s) between our respective setups. Perhaps my Stiletto configuration is more complex than yours? Even though I've culled it down over the years, my bar still has 8 buttons with a total of 13 menus and stiletto.ini is a 1,750 line file of about 53 KB. As I said earlier, what happens is that stiletto.exe appears as a running process in XP TM, but is not accessible in the usual way. In my case that's by taking my mouse cursor to the middle section of the top screen edge. Not surprisingly, that fails too. But if you post your code I could try it. Just wish I could say the same I wonder if our versions differ? I think mine is 98h, which I thought was the latest. Given that it's long since been obsoleted by Power Pro, I was surprised you found a download. If you post or PM me the link I'll try that too. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Yes, I know that, but a shell is not a window. My question was really asking what ME Pro thinks 'Program Manager' means. Again: - Why does ME Pro call it a visible window, when it's not? - Why does ME Pro regard it as a window at all, when other programs do not? (XP Pro Task Manager was one familiar example I gave, but there are others.) -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Am I alone in disliking the new way that ME Pro starts the debugger? In ME 3 I could hit F9 from the Script Editor and by default it would run the macro starting in the previously open window. Which was what I wanted to do for 99% of the time. But in ME Pro the default is to offer me a choice of all my windows, arranged alphabetically apart from the default of running the macro in the ME Script Editor. How often would anyone want to do that? So the only way now to get fast action is to add temporary commands in the macro to activate the target window, allowing you to hit F9 followed by Enter. To achieve what used to be a one keystroke, no-nonsense operation in ME 3. Unless I've misunderstood and others point up significant benefits of this design that I've missed, I'll raise it formally with ISS. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I guess this is just another example of the strangeness of Stiletto For example, the only way I've found so far of reliably starting it is to d-click C:\Program Files\Stiletto\stiletto.exe. Using a standard shortcut of any flavour doesn't usually work. The process appears in TM, but the program's UI doesn't appear. So I'm still looking for a neat and robust way to get ME Pro to respectively close & open Stiletto at the start & end of my macros. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

It runs OK here. What happens if you add a tiny delay? Are there any potentially 'unusual' names in the list, strings with % characters in them, that sort of thing? Try closing all of them, half at a time. (Testing your macro prompts another question I've often been puzzled over, but I've posted that separately.) -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Why is 'Program Manager' shown as a visible window by ME Pro? It appears in its browsable list of Visible Windows when creating commands. And if I try to activate it in a macro I see nothing. What exactly is 'Program Manager' anyway? Nothing of that name appears in XP's Task Manager. And other utilities I have that claim to list all programs and windows don't include it. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks Steve. Pleased to say that I eventually discovered the cause last night - while I still had hair left Here's the explanation in case anyone else has a generically similar issue and ends up in this thread. Turns out you are right on the mark in your speculation about conflict in background processes. In my case it's with a power utility program I've described before, called Stiletto. On closer study I realised that the spurious and intermittent characters were always the same two, semi-colon ';' and equals '='. It couldn't be coincidence that these were the two prefix characters used by Stiletto for its 'macrophrases', like ME Pro's shortkey prefixes. (Stiletto allows flexible choices in case there are application conflicts. My normal prefix is '=' but I use ';' as an alternative in Excel, as that's its Formula indicator.) After temporarily closing Stiletto, my macro ran perfectly! I'm still perplexed as to why this occurred though, because nothing was actively being done by Stilettto at the time these random errors happened. Anyway, now that I know, I'll run a macro that closes Stiletto at the very start of my macro, and re-open at its end. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK