Cory

Try emailing support. I have no idea what could be wrong with yours but I know it works on mine fine. Mine wouldn't 'hear' my hotkeys until I disabled protected mode but I could still run macros without them. You might try a simple macro to see if they will run manually instead of hotkeys. I've seen other talk about hooks but I don't know anythign about that. Check the other posts for more info. I didn't have to do it but it seems these are the two things most mentioned. Don't forget you can email support as well. They're usually pretty good on stuff like this.

That is a very good explanation of handles and about what I thought. The example looks cool but in this case one of the controls is a date field which is always different. I’m still a little curious though about how ME handles, er, handles. If I understand it the Get Control command’s title now makes sense. It doesn’t store the handle but rather points ME to where the handle can be found. Is this correct? Now assuming my second paragraph is correct I don’t understand why ME can’t find the control’s handle sometimes. If I open message window A and fire the GC it sees the window and looks at the little index thingies and finds the handle for a date field. But if I open a second window B and close Window A I would expect ME would follow the yellow brink indexes and find the new control handle. But it doesn’t appear to. It’s almost if it’s remembering handle it got on the previous macro’s run. Is this possible? And if so is there a registry key or something I can flush? I tried the modify control thingy to change the title window as well. The control properties look identical and now I set T1 to the top window title and use that to modify the get control but again it seems as if it’s remembering the first window. Again it seems like it’s remembering the first value and even though I’m explicitly telling it to ‘start here’ from a window title it pulling the first window. I think I can figure a way around this if I could just understand why it is doing this. I’ll go experiment some more and see if I can learn more about handles in the mean time.

If you’re just starting out it would take to long for me to teach you all the things for my solution. I have to be careful because I can easily get sucked into hours of forum help when I should be billing hours! <g> I have to go to LA today but I could help you a bit here and there. If you like we could set up a phone conversation as well. Sometimes these things are easier and quicker by phone. I’ll toss out a couple of random thoughts before I leave… http://bluepointdesign.com/macros/CRLF&TAB.htm I would make use of the CRLF in my solution so read the blurb on my web page. I’ll explain more later. Buy Joe’s book. http://www.macros.com/macexplained.htm Some of it’s a bit fragmented but it’s a wealth of information. And I don’t know how anyone could really make it less fragmented as so much is so interrelated it’s hard to ‘start’ from anywhere without a dozen tangents. Check out the examples: http://www.macros.com/share.htm And tutorials: http://www.macros.com/share.htm The tutorials have really good working examples you can download that explain certain functions and techniques. If you are I a bind for time the support page http://www.macros.com/support.htm mentions that they can do it for you as well for a fee or they can turn you on to someone who could. I too would be willing to hire out and even teach a few things I know. For billable hours I wouldn’t mind putting you to the front of my queue. I hope that this doesn’t qualify as a solicitation. I’d hate to break any rules here. <g> But I’ll help you in any case, it just might take longer. If you are monitoring for any change you will need a two sided approach. Any time you have two data sets to compare you need to look from both sides. I do this often in Excel seeing if something occurs in one set and visa versa. So you will need to make two lists and compare each for the missing. We can simply loop thru the files looking for them. I’ll hook up with you more later.

Thanks for your prompt response but what a bummer. The main reason I use controls in cases like these is because things like mouse clicks often fail because the user has a different toolbar or whatever that changes location. Otherwise I could just triple-click the location and grab the text. In fact the date in an OL message is left justified so the location is different for each window width. Of course I could do some math but… I’ll have to come up with a different tack then. Maybe I’ll enforce one message only and check for null value. Hmmm…. I have an idea but I need to learn more from you o great sage. From my experiments I’ve gotten a vague idea of what might be happening but I’m not a programmer. It seems to me that the ‘address’, for lack of a better term, of the control is different in each window and that would make sense to me. But ME’s control details show the same. Is it the case that this is not actually the controls address? Maybe this is why you call the command “Get Control” as it almost seems like what is stored in the details is more like a pointer to help ME find the correct control address at runtime. And like an ant scent trail after you move the bag of sugar it now points nowhere if I closed the initial window. This is why it returns nothing. Is this what you are referring to as a ‘handle’? I know this is above and beyond so if you don’t have the time I don’t expect a detailed dissertation and I know I can use other workarounds. It’s just that I really like controls for their ability to reduce run time timing errors and other problems. If I had a functional understanding of what’s happening behind the curtains I could come up with a routine to find the right window or something. Last question: How come when I use the Variable Modify Control command to change the control’s window title does it still not work? I know if this was a solution you would have mentioned it but it’s another one of those things that stick out as being odd for probably the same reason. I’m rereading your message about the handles. Where is this handle saved anyway? Could it be flushed? When does it get saved? Many thanks as usual. Again this more of an aggravation thing where I don’t understand how something works and therefore how to fix it. Practically I should just change tack. If it were a microwave it would be in bits and pieces on my bench right now. Much cheaper to buy a new microwave but I’m stubborn that way. Hope you have a great day!

What, the part about dithering? Sounds kind of perverse now that I read it again. <g> By that I mean varying by slight amounts.

It’s hard to imagine your applications and what exactly is going on but I think you might be barking up the wrong tree. You can have ME move from window to window, move to the proper fields and do ALL of that for your user. IOW I think you’re running into inhibiting technicalities because you’re trying to do it the hard way. If you could be more specific I might be able to give you some more specific advice. I have many macros that move data from one application to another and it’s pretty easy but every case is a little different and requires a different tack. But as a “For instance” I’ve written macros that would quickly grab fields from a Database and open a web browser to UPS and fill in a shipping form. In these cases there usually isn’t any user intervention but in this case I might ask the user which shipment method they want to use. It’s usually quite simple. But if there is no intervention required you can do thousands of records quite quickly. Are both applications Windows based? DOS or terminal based applications pose some special problems but usually they’re pretty simple to solve. Check out the windows control features in ME too. You can literally cram data into fields of an application without even activating it. This might solve your desktop space problems. Check out the tutorial on ME’s site demonstrating how one can use the Windows calculator program. Also don’t forget toe research possible built in export and import capabilities of your software. I’ve often seen people attempt to port data the hard way when the application already can do it. Get more specific and maybe even post some screen shots and I’ll be happy to give my 2 cents. Just don’t forget to dither and sensitive data.

That's easy. I have a couple of routines that do similar things and depending on exactly what you are doing it may differ greatly as to which way works best. Note: Using a file count is a quick way to indicate change unless there is a possability of a delete and new. Then things get a little more complex but not too difficult. I'll assume it's only going to be adding new files. I would run the count on a schedule and write the number of files to the registry. This way the macro doesn't have to keep running. On first run I would create a list of files and stick them in a text file. Just append the var to a text file seperated by a CRLF (Carrige Return-Line Feed). When the count increases copy that file to a text var. Then repeat with folder and for each file name see if the var holding the entire text file contains your text. When it finds one that is not contained 'break' and use that to do whatever you like with that file name. When you search thru the vars from that file you might want to append your search text with a CRLF. You see you could have two files 11.txt and 1.txt and you will find 1.txt in the accumulated var from file if there was a file before named 11.txt. To if you prepend your text you are using in the "contains" comparison with a CRLF and maybe even append you're sure not to muff it. Oh, you need to write a CRLF to the beginning of that file as well for this trick to work. TO make your own CRLF see my webpage on it and steal my code. http://bluepointdesign.com/macros/CRLF&TAB.htm

In general I've had needs in the past to run macros for long periods of time but there are always problems like the inability to run another macro during that long period. For instance I have some fax montoring macros that in effect need to check all day if any new PDF files appear in a folder on the server. Instead of having it run forever I use the scheduler and have it run ever 60 seconds or whtever. Usually that is sufficient. If you wanted to you could schedule a disable/enable routine as a seperate macro.

I'm still not sure what you are trying to do but it sounds like it isn't running at all. If you write a simple macro to type the text "The end" and lanch it in Notepad will it not work?

Don't forget to disable protected mode in IE7.

What exactly isn't working? I've played with ME in Vista and it seems that most things work OK.

Essentially: I want to create a macro that will file an Outlook 2003 mail message to file. I want to use the message date and subject in the file name. With a single mail message open it was simple to get the control text to do this. But with multiple windows I sometimes get blank values for the controls. How can I get this to work with multiple windows? Long winded: I don’t understand something about windows controls. If you have calculator.exe open and interact with controls, even when minimized or not on top, it’s just like the demos but how do you deal with two instances of calculator open? In Outlook a user could have several editor/viewer windows open but when I run the “Get control” from two open windows I don’t see any difference. <GETCONTROL2P:01:OUTLOOK.EXE:rctrl_renwnd32 Title1 - Message (HTML) 003:7 AfxWndW 1 #32770 5 RichEdit20WPT > <GETCONTROL2P:01:OUTLOOK.EXE:rctrl_renwnd32 Title2 - Message (HTML) 003:7 AfxWndW 1 #32770 5 RichEdit20WPT > Windows must know the difference, how do I? Example: I opened a message and set up a control to grab the date. Works great. I open a second message and run the control and even if the new message is on top the macro returns the contents of the first window. Kind of makes sense. If I close the first message and run it again it returns a blank field. Now if I close the second message and open it again as the first window the macro will grab the control text fine. It’s almost like it IDs them one at a time as they are being opened and my get control it slaved to the first open window. But I don’t see anything different in the get control. I was thinking of a workaround to ensure they only had one window open but even there I would have a problem. If the mail message wasn’t the first they opened it won’t work! <g> If someone could explain what I am missing here I would greatly appreciate it. Also if you have any suggestions in general to do what I’m trying to do please bring it on.

Many thanks Joe!

I have installed ME without the editor on a couple machines where I don't want the users to be able to modify the macros but I’m at a loss on how to configure it. I knew I needed some network sync capabilities so I exported some registry keys for that and would just port them into the registry but it seems the settings for backups are under the HKCU, not the HKLM. I concerned now that maybe my settings are not working because I don’t know which hive it’s pulling from. Could someone please tell me how best to modify an editor-less installation? Or maybe I’m missing something. Is there a way to get to the preferences without the editor? Or maybe there’s a better way I’m missing altogether. Thanks for any and all advice.

We had a discussion about it here in this forum a while back. I'm hyper busy now so I don't have time to look it up for you. Just search thru my posts and you'll find it. For item 2 look into the activation tab of the scripting editor and use the window activation. Then check out the various 'wait for' commands in the timing section.

If you use text type and do <Control><Tab> it will in effect hold the control key down for the tab. This is just for the next keystroke. If you want to have the control down for more than one keystroke use the "Control Down/Up" option. Make sure you don't have the "Paste from clipboard" checked.

Date/Time command. It's in the text section.

I want to get the file name and path from a file currently open in Acrobat Pro. I would use HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSaveMRU\pdf but if the user opens the file from a link it won't get registered here. Any ideas?

Hey buddy! You can use set and use enviromental variables instead of ME variables.

Thanks for the suggestion. At the moment I'm just mouse clicking on the control that is the cell reference window to the left of the formula bar. Whatever cell you're in will be there. I just know there must be a hotkey to get to that field just like there is for the formula bar and font size, I just don't know what it is. Thanks again though.

Can someone tell me how to get your cell position in Excel to use in the macro. ?

I do something similar to your startup file suggestion on my laptop. ME annoys the hell out of me here because I work in different offices all the time and ME gets so temperamental when its macro isn’t available. Takes forever, wants to load backup copies and all sorts of other jive. So now I load different macro files based on if they exist or not. Saves a lot of trouble.

This is similar to what I have now except I use the current user. The problem in this case is that I want it to change dynamically during the day and I need to be able to pass the torch so to speak. Here’s exactly what I need. I want to monitor a folder for a new PDF file to appear on the server. When it does I want to run the macro for the monitor (a person) which will pull it up and present it to them and ask who to notify. But I also need to be able to change the user to another like when the person goes on break. Difficulty: I don’t want to have 20 machines running macros every minute and, in this case, reading a file from a server. How I am currently doing it: I have a text file on the server that contains the domain user name for the current monitor. I have a little utility that allows the user to select a different domain user which overwrites the file with that value. The macro is scheduled to run every minute, reads from the file the current monitor and if their user name differs aborts the macro. The one thing I added was to add a test before the read from the network file to see if the user is one of four that are pre-designated by the company as fax monitors. So I only have 4 machines hitting the server every minute. My disappointment: It just seems like a kluge. I would love to have a scheduled macro that runs at startup that determines if you’re one of the 4 and then doesn’t run the macro and unnecessary 480 times a day per user. Any ideas on how to do it better? I’m sure there’s some different way to set this up without necessitating separate files.

Thanks Kevo.

This is related to my other recent post but I need just a quick answer for what I am working on now. I have a macro file that’s used by several users. The sync is enabled. I have one macro that will run every minute for one user and I wanted to disable it for all the other users by checking the name. But it occurred to me that if I disable it the macro on the other users it might also disable it for the active user. My question is if I disable a macro in a shared macro file with sync will that disable the macro for all the rest of the users as well? I just keep running into a brick wall here it seems. I want one macro file but I want them to work differently per user. I just can’t seem to find an efficient way to do this. Help!