Cory

Oops! Courier was stripping out that special character. Repasted it and used Courier New. See if that works for you now.

I threatened to share some of my subroutines that I was creating so today I’m making good on my promise to some extent. I only posted two on my website so far but you’re welcome to them. One was already common knowledge. Go to http://bluepointdesign.com/macros to see the result. For now I just stuck two up because some of the others have yet to be finalized or have some form of ugliness I want to fix before sharing. As soon as I get more I’ll post them there. I just thought it would be nice to start a repository of useful subroutines to hopefully save someone labor down the road. Also since I’m a newbie I would love the comments of you all as to ways to do things better. Many of my macros already need to be redone because I have discovered a command or option that I did not know about then. So feel free to criticize. Oh, but you can’t criticize the rest of my website! I’ve been to busy writing macros to finish rolling out my new theme.

Me too. I'm constantly discovering something new that make me go “Doh!” and then I want to go back and fix all the macros I had written while ignorant more because I’m embarrassed than lack of functionality. That’s what these forms are great for. We all help each other out to learn new things.

I would suggest using "Start Repeat With Prompt" repeat option. This will prompt the user for the number of times to repeat at the beginning of the loop.

I'm not sure of how many of what and when you are entering but I think if there were multiple items I would use ME to create a CSV file, prompting you for each value, and simply import that into the DB. Also most DB's can link to an external file which could be a CSV and in that case you would never have to import but just use that as a sort of table. Of course you could also create an action query to port the data to a proper table if need be. Of course you would still need ME to enter the info in QB. QB can import a special tab seperate value file but I haven't had a chance to figure out the mappings and what all the header info does yet. One day... Also in the CSV you won't have the title cell problem obviously. But like I say I'm not entirely sure what you are doing so I might be way off base.

If it worked before and not now without changes it sounds like a bug. You might consider reporting it here.

I discovered a bug in 3.5c which was fixed in ‘d’ but now there is a new problem. If you add an email send command with a variable in the recipient and close then reopen the command the variable disappears. The ME boys are aware of this and I am sure are working on a fix but for those of us who need it now I found a workaround. The problem is that it is simply invisible. You can still select the apparently empty row to do whatever, it’s just not apparent.

In cases like these I don’t see the benefit of the Case command. Unless you have multiple nested conditions it just adds two extra lines. Of course it’s possible I am ignorant to some other benefit to using case in which case I would love to be enlightened. Lord knows I have a lot to learn.

I have been using ME to scan thousands of documents for a client with great success and learned a cool workaround in ME. You see the high capacity scanners we are using output directly to PDF on a network folder so I wanted to monitor the folders for any new files as part of a file disposal macro. Problem is I don’t know what the file name would be as it incrementally changes. I was disappointed to find ME had no capability to monitor a folder for change and also tried Wait For File Exist with the value of *.* but it didn’t work. This would only work if the folder was empty which was my case. So I wrote an elaborate routine to do so and as I was debugging it I found a cool trick. I assumed wildcards were out but they’re not! In this case I have it waiting for *.pdf and it works! Also other wildcards like C850*.* work. The only limitation is that you must ensure that no files already exist that match that criteria in the folder of course but a lot of the time this works great if you know part of the file name. Anyway I just thought I would give a little back today.

I forgot... In the macro add an "If file ready" before it starts to process with a pause that says "Close the file you idiot!". Then you have an oportunity to close it and continue the macro. Or better yet do the same "If" above but only open a text box, not a pause, with the same message. Then put in a "Wait for file ready" followed by a "Close text box". This saves you an extra click and as soon as you close the spreadsheed in Excel it will continue.

This is by design. Excel locks all open spreadsheets. If I were you I would create a macro to run while you're in Excel to save as a different name periodically on on command. IOW keep a working copy and the macro's copy. Also you could write a maro in Excel and attach it to that file to do the same thing. Randall: Excel can edit CSV files directly and I assume this is what he is doing.

If I understnad you correct it would look like this in the scripting editor: Multiple Choice Menu: Open a folder If Variable %T1% = "A" Open Folder: c:\blue End If If Variable %T1% = "B" Open Folder: c:\red End If If Variable %T1% = "C" Open Folder: c:\green End If To see what's really going on copy and paste this part into the scripting editor. <MENU2:2:T:01:CenterCenter:Open a folderBlue Red Green><IFVAR2:1:01:1:A><MYCOMP:c:\blue><ENDIF><IFVAR2:1:01:1:B><MYCOMP:c:\red><ENDIF><IFVAR2:1:01:1:C><MYCOMP:c:\green><ENDIF>

Please see attachment. I am using ME to generate invoices in Quickbooks 2003 Basic. Everything works fine except for when the memo field is null. In that case something strange happens and ME tries to save the invoice before we’re done. Took me forever to figure out what was causing it because it doesn’t make any sense. Can someone tell me what’s going on here? In detail I have CSV file that equates to each line entry in the invoice. It simply pastes each line in. But when the last field (memo) in the CSV record is null (empty) something causes QB to try and save the invoice. What’s even stranger is that it does it immediately at the beginning of that loop. IOW it doesn’t even start trying to paste in the values before the null item. As far as I can see ME could only be reading the text in to variables and something happens to cause a save. There are other lines but they are all conditional and would be skipped. I checked the variables but the variable, T6, is being saves as null. What could ME be doing?

Do other ME commands work in the game? I would suspect that if the game takes over the whole screen ME might not be able to function in this environment. For instance ME will not work in a full screen DOS application running in Windows.

Just my two cents but what I do when running drop downs I just start typing. In all normal Windows drop downs if you type multiple characters it will keep advancing to the next matching suspect. So if you're selecting the state typing M yields several names but typing MO will only return Montana. But I like that idea of looping in a drop down and checking each one until your satisfied. Very cool. But if it’s a long list it may take a while.

I eventually created my own simple picker. The user types in the first three characters and it give a multiple choice dialog box that they can select from. Works super fast and slick. Thanks for the suggestions though.

If I understand correctly when you send you would like a combination box where you could choose you “reply to” email address when sending an email. I have some macros that email notifications with links when new documents are converted. Sometimes the there are different users using the same workstation so I change the ME registry value. In your case I would prompt with a multi choice dialog box and save the results to a string var. Then write that var to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Insight Software Solutions\Macro Express\Email". Then when the email goes out it will use the email address you choose. You will need to test this as sometimes programs wont read the registry except at startup but I think the email utility checks it each time it runs in ME as I have never had a problem with it.

Sorry, I've been tied up with another project for a while. As soon as I get back to my big macro project I'll post some of them. But don't laugh!

I've been making some useful subroutines lately by breaking them out of my macros and making generic subs that i can call from anywhere. I was thinking they may be useful to others and am willing to share. Is this the proper place to do so? IOW would you mind if I posted some of my tricks here for all to use? They're noting sophisticated but I was thinking if it could save someone the time and trouble of designing what has already been done...

That's interesting. I was just thinking about this as i have to create a macro to change a whole bunch of NTFS permissions. I found a command line utility in the resource kit but was wondering how to integrate it with ME. Thanks!

Yeah Randall and i both thougth of this but it doesn't work either. Here's my previous post. maybe I have the syntax wrong or someting, can you get it to work?

Here's somethign i don't understand. Why is it I can rename a file to a different location on the same volume but I can't rename a folder?

The folder is not active. I can manually move or delete the folder with no problem. Prior to the move there is no activity going on in there and the 'current' folder is elsewhere. I think it's a bug. The one thing that could be causing a problem is that the network is slow today so maybe it's atiming issue with ME. I've used this move before and it worked OK but every time I try to do it with one of these client folder it baulks and I find it's empty. I agree that when you move a folder or file in Windows it just changes the directory listings and doesn't copy/delete as long as it's on the same volume. However I think that ME does the copy/delete thing when you use the move command without respect to whether it's on the same volume or not. I wish it didn't do this but it still works OK. Just seems dumb and it takes extra time. Thanks for the help.

Joe, I tried your suggestion but now have another problem. I have subdirectories and it wouldn't move them unless I checked the recurse option. Then if the recurse option is checked it moves all the files and then complains that it can't move folder X. Folder X is the first folder in the parent folder aplhabetically which in NTFS means it's the last to me acted on. After the error if one opens the source folder you will find it empty, IOW it worked, and folder X was moved! Arggggg.... I don't know if it's a bug in ME or what. I think move is doing a copy and delete which is silly since we are duplicating the data which takes time. One should just be able to rename the folder but the scripting editor complains that it isn't supported since the destination folder is different. I was told onc as long as it was on the same volume one should be able to rename but it wont let me. What am I doing wrong here?

Geez, I feel stupid. I tried toyr suggestion and it worked fine! I would have sworn I tried that but... Many thanks!