stevecasper

Background: In the past I've had my Backup options set to back up my macro files when terminating the program. Well, recently I had a problem with my computer and had to have the hard drive reimaged and had to reinstall MEP onto the computer. When I went to load my macro files from the external drive I found that the most recent backup was from about 6 weeks earlier. Question 1a: Why didn't my macro files get backed up each time I restarted my computer over the past 6 weeks? Question 1b: Do I need to physically terminate Macro Express before restarting my computer in order to get the files backed up? Current Problem: Because I no longer trust the Back Up automatically option, I've taken to manually selecting Backup from the File menu any time I make substantial modifications to any macros, or build new ones. However, the past day or two I've gotten an error pop-up: The disk is not full (besides, shouldn't this save just over-write the previous .000?) and the disk isn't write-protected, either. I've checked to make sure there aren't any open files (besides the one I'm trying to backup) and I cannot make heads nor tails of this. After I get the error, and click "No", I get another pop-up telling me that Backup is complete. When I check the backup location on my external drive, it shows the date-stamp for the backup as today... so the error... wasn't an error? If somebody can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong so that I can make sure if I ever have computer problems again I won't have to rebuild all of my macros from scratch (or refine them again), I would be tremendously grateful. Thanks in advance!

"Wait For"s can sometimes be a little tricky. If you are finding that the actual Wait For command is not working to your satisfaction, you can try a short Repeat Loop like this: Repeat Until %N1% = 16777215 Get Pixel: Window Coords: 439,447 into %N1% Repeat End In this example I'm causing Macro Express to check the pixel at 439,447 over and over until that pixel is white. The Get Pixel command window has a Mouse Locator tool that can tell you what the color under a given pixel is (such as 16777215, which is 'white'). So the trick is to try and figure out what changes about the page you are waiting for when it finishes loading. This, too, may not work 100% of the time. From what I understand (which may not be much) some Java windows appear to be done loading when in reality they are still hanging somehow. But it's at least another option to play with.

Aha! Thanks Kevin. I was looking under Controls and under Set Variables, I just needed to be more thorough in my Variables category search. Thanks a bunch!

I haven't used controls in ME very often (mostly because so few applications support them), but I have an app that does, and I am looking to reduce the number of commands in a particular set of macros I'm modifying. Right now it looks something like this: Get Control %SerialNumber% Mouse click on Control %SerialNumber% Clipboard Copy Set Text Variable %Serial% from Clipboard I would like it to look more like this: Get Control %SerialNumber% Set Text Variable %Serial% from contents of Control %SerialNumber% For some reason I seem to remember this (or something like this) as possible, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. Any help, clarification, or even disappointing revelation that I am mistaken would be appreciated.

The If Ping Successful command has a "Maximum Time to Wait" setting. It can't be set to less than 1 second, but that is one option.

I haven't used IE 8 so I could be completely off, and I generally have little luck with Controls; but if it used to work, and the new IE accepts them, you may simply need to re-define %C1% in the Get Control %C1% command. Anybody else have any suggestions?

Hey Cory, This sounds interesting. And simple enough that a relative layman like myself might be able to make use of it. I just have a few questions: When saving it, I should save it as a .htm or .html file, correct? How would I go about launching the file in Kiosk mode through ME? Will this alter the way IE launches in general, or only the specific browser launched by ME? Thanks!

That's a valid concern. We previously had a similar issue with using the Copy Command feature. If you hi-lighted multiple lines and copied them, only the top one remained hi-lighted, requiring you to re-select the rest before moving them into position. It was annoying at best. ISS fixed it on the next update (after Terry filed a bug report or feature request - not sure which he did). I recommend making it official with a bug report. Das Bug Report

Like I said, this issue is not consistent. The macro worked fine all day until just before I made my original post. Now it doesn't work at all without the Repeat loop work-around. I have not had this problem on any other machine... but then I don't work on any other machine (and nobody else in my department uses macros nearly as extensively as I do, and don't launch any websites with the macros they do use - besides, I'm still guinea pigging MEP so if the prob is in MEP, they wouldn't be experiencing it anyway.). But as this has happened on several different macros, and because I have rebooted several times with continued problems, I thought it warranted at least mentioning here, and asking if others have had similar problems... I know macros occasionally hang, as there are other posts about it, but I wonder if anybody else has noticed it in direct relation to the Wait For webpage function of various commands.

Hi everybody, This issue may be related to the ever-popular Running Man Hanging posts, or it may be completely separate. I have several macros that call web sites using the Web Site command. I leave my settings to use Internet Explorer, and I have Wait for the webpage checked. Until very recently, I had never experienced any problem with this command or its usage. However in the past day or two I have started experiencing a relatively annoying, macro-crippling problem. ME is not recognizing the webpage as it finishes loading, leaving my macro hanging and waiting. The work-around is straight-forward enough: uncheck wait for webpage, and then build a Repeat loop checking to see if the web site I'm looking for is there. But straight-forward or not, it's obnoxious and undesirable. Has anybody else experiencing the hanging running man issue been able to link it directly to this particular command? Or should I expect to have it happen on other commands as well? And just to be clear: This is happening on a macro that worked fine earlier today. I made one small change to an Update Textbox command that falls immediately prior to the Web Site command, and since then it has not worked (I changed the font size of one word and turned the last line into two lines that are centered, assuming that matters). Undoing the changes - or, more precisely, making new changes that put the Update back the way it was - did not repair the issue. -EDIT - 12:16 PM Mtn The macro I am having the problem with right now systematically launches a number of intranet sites that I use at work. The first one is having the problem described above. The next one launches without a problem. However, after the macro signs me into the site I have a stand-alone Wait for Web Page command that is hanging. Upon deeper research I see that the one that launches without a problem does not have the Wait For box checked. It seems the problem is not necessarily associated with the Web Site command so much as it is with the Wait For command (and the associated Wait For check box within the Web Site command).

Any word on whether or not this bug will be fixed in the next release? Any idea on when the next release will be available? I hope I don't sound pushy; I appreciate the load on the ISS guys. I'm just curious.

Variable Modify String > Tab: Option 2 > Save to Text File Or you could just skip setting the string from the clipboard and use the Clipboard Save Text command to save the info directly to a text file.

This is a quote from Kevin (Insight Software employee): Questions about licensing are best sent to Insight Software Solutions directly rather than asked in this user-to-user forum. If you click on this link, you'll be able to click on a link inside Kevin's actual post that will help you out.

The problem is that your If statement is inside the Repeat loop and its matching End If is outside the repeat. You'll want to bring the Else and End If inside the loop... it will look more like this: Repeat Start (Repeat 255 times) Text Type: %D1% Mouse Move Screen 865, 744 Mouse Left Button Click Mouse Move Screen 794, 682 Mouse Left Button Click If Online Mouse Move Screen 180, 28 Mouse Left Button Double Click Delay 3 Seconds Mouse Move Screen 842, 187 Mouse Left Button Click Mouse Move Screen 844, 211 Mouse Left Button Click Mouse Move Screen 1188, 723 Mouse Left Button Click Else Variable Modify Decimal: %D1% = %D1% + 1 Break End If Repeat End Notice the Break command. That is how you get out of the Repeat loop when dealing with If/Else situations. Hope this helps!

Essentially: No, this cannot be done. The way Macro Express works is it does whatever you would normally do manually, it just does it faster and possibly when you are not there. So in order for ME to type something in a specific box, it needs to take focus away from the other boxes and it will take-over the keyboard (sort of) until it is done doing its thing. There are options for when you don't want it to mess you up. You can have a text box pop up and remain on top until the macro is done, that text box can say something like "Hold on... running scheduled macro" or whatever. Give yourself a 2-3 second delay to stop typing your thing, then the macro types its thing. Another option is to upgrade to ME Pro which has the ability to lock the keyboard so you aren't able to keep typing while the macro runs. Anybody else have any suggestions for Boris?

Also confused, as I've done the same thing.

Amen to that.

I manage by mostly only writing macros for myself and maintaining the few macros my co-workers use (all still on ME3). I don't suggest you drop your paying clients just to ease up your burden. Heck, if I could get paid to write macros, I'd welcome added responsibilities... and then I'd eventually find myself facing the currently incomprehensible (to me) problems that you face regularly. I'm like a kid who just learned how to catch a ball watching a professional juggler tossing 7+ balls in the air and keeping them going. If he says "I wish I could do this while walking," I might think: "how hard can that be? I can toss my 1 ball in the air and walk... if you can toss 7 why can't you walk, too?" Odd analogy... if it isn't clear, just ignore it and pretend I said something else.

Awesome news, Kevin! Thanks to all you guys at ISS who keep on top of these things! Thanks for the nice words, Cory.

First, definitely do what Kevin suggested. Second, I found ASCII File Processes to make a lot more sense after I played around with them a little while, creating unimportant documents in different formats, processing them as comma delimited and then as tab delimited. Make some simplistic files only 2 or 3 lines long, use lots of Text Box displays in your test macro and get a really good feel for how ASCII File Processes work, and that will probably really help you out. Based on what I understand you to have said, you're probably going to benefit most from using Comma Delimited. Each piece of data on each line of your document will get saved automatically to the next variable. Example: Assuming your .txt file looks something like this: data1,data2,data3 data4,data5,data6 Using an ASCII File Process loop to process this, and assuming you set %T1% as the variable to receive the information, the first time through the loop your variables will look like this: T1 = data1 T2 = data2 T3 = data3 The next time through the loop: T1 = data4 T2 = data5 T3 = data6 I hope this helps!

Tab-navigation is fine for text-boxes... and if you're lucky you could just use a Mouse-click on Control command. But this won't work for finding the coordinates of a highlighted word in a chunk of text (higlighted thanks to a Find or Search function). Though I suppose if the text is a hyper-link, then you could tab to it... but I don't see how that could be combined with a Find/Search function. Also, does tabbing to a hyper-link place the cursor there? I've never considered that, but if so it could open some interesting avenues.

Hey everybody. Because I know that ISS already has a ticket for this issue (6793), I don't want to keep bombarding them with 'official' bug-reports about the same issue. Instead, I'm going to start this thread - which I'm borrowing from the Boolean Argument not working thread by Rustywinger, as this is very off-topic in relation to that one. What has been discovered so far: Disabling Command Line 1 causes a crash of the Editor and loss of any unsaved content when:The command on Line 1 is any Repeat Start The command on Line 1 starts a Text File Process The command on Line 1 starts an ASCII File Process The command on Line 1 is an "IF" statement Deleting a command from Line 1 causes a similar crash when:The command being deleted is followed immediately by a disabled instance of any of the commands described above. If further examples are discovered and you want to post your examples in this thread, I'll try to edit my post to include your examples (if I can duplicate them), so that the top post remains as complete as possible. That is, until ISS resolves the issue.

LOL! As I read Cory's post I was thinking "Hmm... I think I might be able to write a short macro that would do that... and I'd be surprised if Cory hasn't already done so."

You know, I've never actually used this feature, but certainly looks like an interesting tool. Maybe I'll start.

You'd think a chat host would have better internet ettiquette. All caps is hard to read and feels like yelling. I use XP at work and Vista at home, and have no noticeable performance issues (beyond those associated with the actual machines). For better help, I recommend giving more detailed information about what it is you're trying to do and what version of Macro Express you are using.