Cory

When I enter multiple email recipients with a string var I get the first address twice, How come? I do this: Variable Set String %T1% "cory@bluepointdesign.com; cory_jackson@sbcglobal.net" E-Mail Send: Know Recipients, Fixed Text, No Attachments <TVAR2:01:01:cory@bluepointdesign.com; cory_jackson@sbcglobal.net><EMAIL2:Center:Center:Center:Center:Center:Center:RNR1TO%T1%|%T1%;S1TestA1> And I get this: Why does the first email address appear twice?

That worked great. A million thanks. I knew that one too and thought I had tried it but I guess not. Since your batting a tousand how about you tell mewhat I'm going wrong with the addressing. I'll put it in another post....

So you have observed that controls are more reliable? Or is that just one of those gut feelings? I have a user on a much slower machine and I get problems there I don't get on mine and I've seen this before. However there's no way to tell if using controls improves it really. I'd rather make life easy for myself but not if it breeds problems. Maybe I'll wait for the next sticky point and try both way and see if either make it better. I just can't understand why it would be better. But then again there must be a reason for their existence. What kind of imaging stuff do you do?

In your little routine you can eliminate a var. Do as you in the CRLF section then recycle the now unused var for the TAB. It's a nit pick, I know. I just can't help looking for ways to improve stuff. <g>

OK, now I see. Newline is only LF in Unix but you need both in MS. FYI I tried both by themselves and they didn't work. It must be CRLF. How come this isn't built into ME of it's used so much? <don't hit me> Thanks for the good example.

Exactly what I've seen. I think I'll just have to copy that. I'm still curious if you really need both. I'm just thnking back to my report writing days and I don't remember a need for two char's. BoF,EoF and CR was about it.

In general is it better to use control clicks instead of keyboard shortcuts? I find that writing macros is easier with the keyboard shortcuts and don't see the benefit of using control clicks instead but I thought I would ask in case I am missing something.

I’m being lazy and thought I would ask instead of experiment. Sorry! I want to write a series of strings to a string variable but I want to have them on separate lines. In the Variable Modify String Append to Text file you can add a carriage return. I want to do that but just keep adding it to a sting var instead of writing a file. My question is do I need both the CR and LF to do this? I’ve seen other’s macros where they create the CR and LF character from decimal and merge them to a string var and then use that. I think it was decimal 10 and 13. In practice what I am using this for is for a simple search tool. I can buzz thru a list of suspects and write all the matches to a string var. Then, to my surprise, I found you can write this to the multiple choice dialog box! Sweet. People can just choose one then. I don’t even need to keep track of them as I can pass them on as the actual text values.

Hey Larry. I can't say anythign about the book but I am currently using ME to a great extent to implement a paperless conversion project for a client. Using ME to scan, metadata, OCR, characterize and file PDF's all automatically with minimal user input. It's for a pension administration company but it's similar ot medical records I think. If this is what you are doing feel free to contact me to compare notes. cory@bluepointdesign.com.

Man I am soooo frustrated with all of this. Why the <expletive deleted> can’t ME have to most obvious and basic functionality of selecting items from a list? Every application in the world has this functionality. I like ME but every time I try to do something tricky I always run into that one hitch or oddly missing feature that becomes a monolith to work around. The reason I use ME is because I am not a programmer so why is it that to do the simplest things I need to be a programmer? Drives me nuts! OK, I’m done ranting. Now I started to write my own routine for picking from a list but it was becoming complicated so I thought I would give Randall’s thing another try. But again it just doesn’t work. This time I copied that wizard to the ME program folder and tried running the playable text picker macro but the man just stands still I the system tray. If I right click him (abort) then it prompts me for a file with the list items. I don’t know what part of ‘abort’ it didn’t understand. Then it goes away a second and displays a MacroExpress dialog box that says “The macro ‘TextPickerWizard’ has been aborted.” And that’s it. I tired importing it and seeing where it was going wrong but I can’t follow what he’s doing. What is ‘Wizard” anyway? And does it need to be installed? And what is MEBasic and does it need to be installed? Is this just an add on product of Randall’s or is it part of ME?

I tried it but I get "Code Wizard not in Macro Express Installation directory?" What does this mean? I get one more text box but hten nothing.

From what I've read here many have tried similar things with ME. It’s an interesting problem but it should be fairly simple in logic but complex (or maybe just alrge) in implementation. I wish I had an example because there may be another way. For instance you could save the graphic and use something like IrfanView to get characteristic info. Or saving it as a BMP to get a file size. Another thing you might consider is scanning the entire image with pixel color and creating some sort of checksum. Let’s say we have white on black pixels. If you needed to distinguish between two graphics one with the word “Yes” and the other with the word “No” the count of black pixels would be different. Stuff like that. In the worst case it should be simple to create a pixel list in an text file or in the registry that would be the fingerprint for the 30X5 character. Then simply create a routine that starts at pixel 1,1 and scans over 5 30 times down. As soon as it doesn’t match the pixel list it bails and moves on to 1,2. But I don’t know how fast ME is at executing these commands and how quickly you need a response so it might not be the best tool. You might try saving the graphic file and searching for a matching hexadecimal string too. Just a thought.

I tried four hours but had no luck. But I did find a command line switch that makes using Outlook a lot easier and this is the route I took. Before I would try to activate/launch then enter keyboard shortcuts and it was fraught with timing problems. Now I launch Outlook.exe with the "/a imp.note" switch and it works slick. Even works if Outlook isn’t open and quietly goes away when it’s done. For HTML I tried adding HTML tags and the normal header info that works in a telnet session but I couldn’t get it to work in ME. I could create an HTML file and attach it but that’s dumb. For a moment I toyed with the idea of pumping it out through a telnet session as a script and I think that would work but using Outlook was easier and I had spent way to much time on it. I think ME is issuing a format header in front of anythign in the message body preempting anythign I add. I think it’s safe to say that sending as HTML is not an option. Pity, is there someplace we could add this as a wishlist? All we would need is a simple check box to change the header.

Randy’s right on but I would like to add something. If you use the same file over sometimes write the file name variable to a registry key. Then the next time add an "If Message" to display the last used file name to give you the option of using the same file as you did last time so you don’t have to browse every time. If there are several files you frequently use try the Multiple Choice Dialog box as a kind of MRUD (Most Recently Used Documents). It works real slick. If you’re really nerdy you can even set up a scoring system but that adds some complexity.

I am not sure about your last sentence but if I wanted it to keep retrying until the pixel wasn't black I would create a repeat group. Before the repeat clear the variable and then put the "get pixel" and comparison in the a Repeat Until loop. The condition for the repeat is "<>" (not equal to) "0". IOW repeat until N1<>0. If you want to try several things it would depend on the text that would by typed. If it were 1,2,3,4... I would say do a repeat loop and use the counter as the variable. If N1<>0 the exit the loop. If it were a series of items Y,N,L or something just try each and put them in an IF where it will only try the next one if N1=0. Does this help? If not give me some more details and I can get something better for you.

I want to use the send email function but what I want to send contains a hyperlink. What do I need to add to the mail message to trick the email client in to thinking it's an HTML formatted email?

I'm sorry, I should have looked at it first. Thanks. Wasn't Kevin the one who wrote that deal on the HTA? Maybe it was someone else. I can't find it now.

So the macro must create the HTA? You can't simply have a premade HTA that posts it's results to the macro it was called to? Sounds difficult. I'll have to take a look at the one you sent me. Say, can you make one like the one you sent earlier but without the 3 letter trick? Somethig that simply gives the selection box? This will work, if you go to Kevin's example and move into the list box and start typing it will take you right to the first suspects. This is a general Windows thing and works everywhere. Havent' you ever moved into a Windows Explorer window and just start typing the forst couple of letters of what you are looking for? It will take you right to it.

Can't I just create and save an HTA? Kevin (was it) had his macro creating the file but it looked strange in my editor. I'll poke at it with a stick here in just a few minutes.

I have an email notification that will use the input from a multiple choice menu to email several people. The multiple choice menu will allow for multiple recipients. How do I address multiple recipients then in the Email Send thingy from this? I can’t seem to figure out what text to put in the variable to work. I tried semi-colons and commas but with strange results. For instance by using a semicolon and recpients A and B I get a message but the To line is A, A, B. I could run the email send thing several times but I would like the recipients to be able to see who else the message was emailed to. What am I missing here?

It didn't work but we're on the right track here. It blows up if the first three don't exist and if you enter fewer than 3 one gets odd results. But forget that now, I gotta learn how you guys make these HTA's! Please tell me. Ideally I would like to create an HTA with multiple fields. I wouldn't need your picker then as the user can simply start typing. Whats-his-butt did that really cool write up on using HTA's but it looked complicated to me. I asked how it's done but never got a reply. Can you teach me Mr. Wizard? I mean do you use a GUI HTML editing program to create them? Or you just hard code the stuff. And how do you get it to link to a macro variable? Please please tell me! I have to add a feature to the one new macro I am workin on now so hopefully you will have an answer for me by the time I get back.

You should be able to just read the pixels colors with the "Get Pixel Color" and when the appropriate pattern is matched the variable you used to get the match is your location. My answer seems to obvious to me so I reckon I must be missing something. Maybe you could give me a littel more info to work with.

For the "View Source" option I simply pop open the webpage and search for an identifying string of text like the link text or graphic. Then I copy the line to my clipboard and parse out the "HREF" part which is the link. Then I simply launch that in a new web window. Obviously the link you need to follow must be variable or you could simply launch the URL. Usually you can find text to use as a keystone but sometimes it's difficult. Nice thing about forums and such is that they are consistent and there's usually a direct way to URL. For instance you might not actuality need the URL under the edit button. Sometimes you can find a message ID or something and use a standard databasey URL link. Like eBay. Let’s say a webpage has a bit of text “Leave feedback for item ??????????” someplace where the Q marks are the item number. Well simply search for that and arrow over and highlight the ebay item number and launch that with http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item= in front of it and you will have it. You didn’t want to leave feedback, you were just using it as a keystone to do something else.

Let me give you an example of the find and tab first. Let's say to the left of the "Edit" button there was a string of text "User information:". I would search the web page with a CTRL+F and enter "User information:" in the text box followed by ENTER. Now "User information:" will be highlighted. Since the next hyperlink on the page is the button I want to click all I have to do is Text Type a TAB and now the “Edit” button will be highlighted. Now just TT an ENTER. <HTTP2:2:T:https://manage1.sprintpcs.com/Manage><TEXTTYPE:<CONTROL>f ><WAITWIN2:000010:000000:Find ><MSD:500><TEXTTYPE: PCS Phone Number: ><MSD:500><TEXTTYPE:<ENTER> ><MSD:500><TEXTTYPE:<ESC> ><MSD:500><TEXTTYPE:<TAB>7605551212<TAB>Password<ENTER> > This is one I use in a larger macro to go to my cell phone bill as an example.

I have many special purpose macros but I'm a hacker and rarely organize and remark properly so they're quite ugly and not ready for public scrutiny. You should have seen the one I made for eBay to fill out the UPS shipping form from my database after they went to the multipage input model. Geez, that was ugly. Then eBay/PayPal decided to offer one to generate shipping labels which complete negated the need for my macro. Now that was a waste of time! <g> Then there was the one I wrote to download all the messages from a Yahoo group. All 34,000 messages which, just to foil such a thing, Yahoo inserts periodic disrupter pages so one can't simply plow thru the messages by the numbers. So I had to ID those and other things like avoid download quotas by periodically resetting my router from the macro in order to get a fresh IP address. Then it saved them all as text files and stripped out all the garbage and left a bunch of pretty text files. Of course half way thru my 4 day ordeal Yahoo decided to 'revamp' the look of their website and changed everything around! It was cool though, at one point I was distributing the tasking to machines in multiple offices and using FTP to coordinate their efforts by downloading blocks of 1000 at a time. Very cool. In the future if I make something cute I'll try to make it more presentable and post it up here. I should make them nicer anyway becasue I often come back to them later intending to tweak what I had stop in my tracks thinking "What madman wrote this?" Hey, do you have any validation routines?