Cory

I don't think so. That's why using Outlook makes life a lot easier. <g>

No problem, I enjoy it and I learn a trick or two from you all. In fact you were teh one who got me thingking aobut the right click and I put it out there and Paul came up with that awesome tutorial. Now I have a cool new trck I would have never though of before.

Yeah that sounds about like what my experiences were. Glad to see we concur.

Yeah I could see that. But you were saying your application was full screen so the text box wouldn't be the way to go. For reminders and such I use Outlook.

Here's an idea for ya. Instead of using a text box create a text file with a name like "Lost is on at 8pm.TXT" and launch it minimuized. Since the name is in the title bar you would see it in the taskbar and it won't jump up in front of you.

One of my macros frequently jumps up in front of the user. To avoid having them get interupted in the middle of typing where they could hit an 'enter' accidentally in the popup box I first play a ringtone as an annunciator and give thema second or two before popping up the dialog box.

The fisrt one is correct:

"C:\Program Files\Macro Express3\Meproc.exe" /AContextMacro /VT1:%1

This is highly cool. I't killing me becasue I have other things to work on now and I can't play with it yet...

That doesn't make sense. The whole point of a text box is to display information. What's the point of displaying it if you're, uhhhh..... not going to display it. But even with my sample I wrote you if the screen was maximized it would still go back to your full screen applicaiton. Well good luck with that.

Snattlerake, snattlerake

Where there's two there's one

You mean what I know

Happy hunting. If you're still having troubles don't hesitate to ask.

Hold on, these are ME commands. They just don't look like it becasue I pasted them in raw format so you can copy and paste tehm into your macro.

OK, here's what you do. Start a new blank macro in the scriping editor. highlight what's in the code section below. Now copy it to your clipboard. Now go back to your scripting editor and paste it in. It should now look like normal ME script commands.

<TVAR2:01:06:><TBOX4:T:3:00LeftCenter000278000200:000:Open window%T1%><ACTIVATE2:%T1%><DELAY:10><TBCLOSE:Open window>

You see what looks like normal instructions is actually this gobblygook. Check iit out, open any script of yours and go to the direct editor. See? Gobblygook!

Does this help? If not I can upload you an MXE.

Wait a minute, are you asking what you do with the 'code' text that I put in my message? Just copy and paste it into ME script editor.

You will save the window title to a text variable and then open your window. Now activate the window by title saved in that variable.

Variable Set String %T1% from Window Title
Text Box Display: Open window
Activate Window: "%T1%"
Delay 10 Seconds
Text Box Close: Open window

<TVAR2:01:06:><TBOX4:T:3:00LeftCenter000278000200:000:Open window%T1%><ACTIVATE2:%T1%><DELAY:10><TBCLOSE:Open window>

Here's a mcaro to demonstrate. All it does is grab the title, open a text box and activate teh original window. Then it waits 10 seconds and closes that text box.

Dude I told you that in my second post! <g>

Variable Set String from Topmost Window Title.

<TVAR2:01:06:>

Naw, it's simpler than that, you don't need to sort since we only need one file.

BTW Kevo, Vista seems the same.

What I would do is a repeat with folder. Extract the date time info and run thru every file. For each one get the date and compare. If the date is older push it to a 'bubble' variable. Then this will be used for comparison on each subsequent iteration. IOW if the file date is older move it to the bubble. In the end you will have the oldest file. PG Macros function library have date comparisons pre-built for you.

I found it!!!!!! Paul you're my golden god for a day. Many thanks.

The syntax SB /VT:%1, not /VT:%T1

It works so cool now! My mind is boggling at the possabilities.

My problem was when it did not work initially I started changing things. One of the first things I tried was to remove the variable restore and like an idiot never put it back. Once I read the help file on the syntax I saw the need for it and put it back but was getting "T1" as the result. So I went back and tried the %1 trick and it worked perfectly. Still don't understand te restore variables thing but that's a subject for a seperate post.

Thank you very much Paul!

I'm soooo excited about this and it's tantalizingly close. You're just teasing me, aren't you Paul? <g>

"C:\Program Files\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe" /AContextMacro /VT1:%T1

Is what I have in the key now per your instruction. It still returns blank. In the case that Vista was tossing in a greasy monkey wrench I tried it on a Server 2003 machine and got the same result. Are you sure about that syntax? The "%T1" seems an awkward way to end it. I tried "%T1%" and "%1" but still no luck. Any other ideas?

Also where can I find a list of command line switches? I see no reference to them in help or o the ME website. I'll keep cracking at it.

I disagree. I embarked on an energy saving campaign at one of my clients and after some trouble figured out how to get the machines to go into S3 standby (deep sleep) and set them up so that the only way they would wake is if I fired a magic packet at them. This eliminates any other traffic from waking them. But if ME was running they wouldn’t go into standby. It was my fax monitor macro and all it was did was check to see who the domain user was, compare it to a list saved in the macro and abort. No mouse keyboard or other UI commands. Yet if the macro was scheduled to go off every 10 minutes and the computer set to standby in 1 minute (for testing) the machine would go to sleep. This was verified on a couple of machines. So it was my belief that on a machine with an enabled inactivity timer paid no regard to whether a macro was scheduled or not. It had no effect on the countdown and a machine would go to sleep regardless. My speculation was that it was the disk or network access that occurs every time a macro runs that caused the machine to reset the inactivity counter. As always there may be something I’m missing in all this but I think my experiment was pretty sound in logic so I’m interested in any theory that you might have on this matter as it might have bearing on how I address the standby problem with my client. I know, maybe it’s because I have network sync enabled?

You could do a wait for control or window title but that will slow you down. I think I would do the same but I would use controls instead.

Oops! When I highlighted I didn't catch the first quote mark. Now it launches but when it displays %T1% it is blank. Seems it isn't passing the file name. Any thoughts?

Here, I exported a key. Maby you could check it out and see if I did it proper.

I followed your instructions to the letter and it looks like it might work but I think there might be somethig about Vista that is causing this not to work. When I right click I see the menu item but I get the error "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriete permissions to access the item."

Any thoughts?

Paul: I don't think you understood what I meant. This is assuming that ME is not disabling the inactivity time.

I was saying the in effect if a scheduled macro runs it's activity that will keep a machine from going ot sleep. But if you run a macro and have it disable the scheduled macro that macro will never run allowing the machine to go to sleep.

I like your ideas about using the Windows Scheduler. I've known this and although I don't think it should be employed in all cases but I definitely see many advantageous applications.

Sounds like fun. A great application of ME. I was looking at this some more. I know on other machines multiple Word docs would launch. I think something in Vista may have changed. Might want to add a delay in between each link of the batch file. That might help.

As a practical matter I would not open all the Word documents at once. I have something similar in my fax macro. An MFP dumps a PDF in a folder and I open it up and look at it and email selected users a notification and move the file to a ‘notified’ folder.

My approach is to schedule a macro to run every 60 seconds. It does a…

Repeat with Folder (T1)

Break

Repeat End

To get the first file name. I then opens the PDF and prompts the user, enters metadata and then moved the file and email an alert. Then this whole thing is in a repeat until T1=”” (Blank). So you see it fires every minute and repeats as many times as there are files. Even if the folder contents change in the mean time the macro will pick it up. Works slick.

I would recommend you consider this approach instead of launching a gazillion Word documents all at once.

Hmmm.... You're right. It only opens the first file. I had not tried this before with Word and you're right, it doesn't work. Sorry, bad advice. It works with other applications, evidently not with Word.

Still I go back to asking about why you need to open all of them at once.

Sure. Get the title of the active window, display a text box and leave open, then reactivate the window you started from.

I would love to be able to right click on a file in Windows Explorer and have an option in the menu for "ME processes" that would run a macro. I know I've seen pretty simply programs which add things to this list and I was wondering if anyone knew how.

Alternatively I wouldn't mind simply highlighting a file and then run a hotkey macro that would somehow gather the file name so I can do something with it.