margaret

Hi all, Nothing else has worked except rberg's method above. With everything else I tried, even an improbably long delay just for testing, the variable never receives the text from the clipboard, even though the macro behaved as if it had (continued on to the next steps). But rberg's method of testing if Clipboard = "" then wait works. Thanks!

Thanks to all who responded. (My ISP has been experimenting with different spam-trapping programs, so I didn't get the notifications until today.) I'm not using simulated keystrokes, just the Clipboard Copy command. I try to avoid using simulated keystrokes unless it's the only way. (My first attempts at writing these macros relied on simulating keystrokes and that was much less reliable than using MacEx commands -- especially for switching windows. I occasionally have to add a "wait for" some window to appear, but not always.) What's interesting is that I'm writing sets of similar macros that copy from various applications that all handle the same type of file. So far I've written sets that work with four different applications, and the Clipboard Copy was no problem whatsoever. All the testing is done in the same version of Windows. So I don't know if this new problem is really in that particular application, or perhaps in the way that particular application communicates with Windows. But I'll try testing for the existence of the variable and see if that works. Meg

If the Clipboard Copy command doesn't work in a certain application, even though it has worked perfectly in similar programs in many macros, what should I suspect? Copying with keyboard shortcuts in that application seems to work fine. Thanks.

I had tried that already. I had put a display right before the Activate. The box came up, but then the switch didn't happen. The only IFs/END IFs are at the beginning of the macro, and it kept on working after I added those. THere are no IFs in the text manipulation bit (it's just reversing names, like turning Ebenezer Samuel Anderson into Anderson, Ebenezer Samuel before pasting it in). Well, after I wrote the above sentence, I just now went back in and tried it again and now it's working! But I had shut down the computer and rebooted in between my earlier message and this one. I still wonder what happened, as I'm writing these for someone else, so I really don't want them to behave erratically. The fact that it's working after rebooting suggests some temporary memory thing, though I don't know how that would apply to this situation exactly. I'll see how they behave ongoing. Thank you, rberg. Meg

I have written a series of macros that copy text from one application to another and then return to the original application. Suddenly the return part does not work -- but I don't get any errors. I don't see the little "running" icon either, so the macro obviously "thinks" it's done. The changes I made today only had to do with manipulating text and variables to make changes to the text before copying it. I don't see how that should affect the window-switching. Can you think of anything that would cause this? I tried closing and re-opening Macro Express and the two applications in question, but it didn't make a difference. I'm using the Activate Window command and it recognizes the window from a partial title that uses the application name. It worked perfectly until now. Thanks, Meg

Is there something I should do to enable email notifications of post to a topic, beyond enabling them on the Post a new topic page and adding pgmacros.invisionzone.com to my whitelist, which I've done?

Thank you so much. This is great! I got it to work. This is going to save a enormous amount of time!

I'm trying to take a string from the clipboard and replace all paragraph returns within the string with spaces. I understand how to get the string. But the option to Strip CR/LF just removes the returns, mushing two words together. I tried the replacement option, but it doesn't seem to understand either "CR/LF" or "<CR/LF>". The position of the return within the string is not predictable. Is it impossible to do what I want? Or is there some other way to communicate a return to the command for modifying variables? Thanks.

Well, at the end of the macro, I used a Word shortcut of Ctrl+D, which moves down to the beginning of the next paragraph; but I think you're talking about a separate Control Key Down step, right? I could try a different method. I wasn't using separate key down/ key up steps. (Trying to think whether the problem start after I added the Ctrl+D -- it was so confusing at first that I'm not sure, but it's possible.) I'm only dealing with a few words at a time, mostly names of people, places, and organizations, and I'm using copy and paste. Also, I have concluded that the reason the shortkeys won't work is that in that application (Adobe Reader) you can't type, at least not in that situation -- you can select and copy text with mouse or keyboard but you can't type anything into the document. I think the shortkeys only work where you can type into the application, or else there wouldn't be the setting about whether the shortkey characters remain typed into the document, right? I tried some shortkeys in Word and they worked fine. So I suspect the shortkey method would just never work in Reader. Is there a way to set a preference in Macro Express so that it won't start another instance of itself? I looked around but didn't come across anything.

I wrote a macro for a friend. The macro is supposed to copy the current selection in Adobe Reader, paste it into a Word document, type a tab and a return and then return to Acrobat. (There are four variations of the macro with some slight differences--and not all of them return to Reader. Some just stop after copying into Word so that the user can type in other things.) I set the macros up and tested them thoroughly on my system in the trial version of Macro Express. I got the macros running on my friend's system, but some odd problems ensued. I think it has something to do with the keyboard shortcuts. What would happen is: Suddenly Alt-Tab would no longer work, and I could no longer type into dialog boxes or into Word. The system was acting as if the Control key was always being held down; I couldn't select one thing at a time with the mouse. If I closed Word and tried to restart it, I'd get a message something like "Word has detected that the Control key is being held down. Start in safe mode?" Restarting the system would fix the problem, until I ran my macros again. Sometimes they would work the first time; it seemed somewhat unpredictable, but eventually the same thing would happen. I googled "Alt+Tab not working" and found discussions about Alt+Tab not working in certain situations where PowerToys was installed, but my friend doesn't have PowerToys installed as far as I could tell. AND we also tried changing all the keyboard shortcuts to shortkeys, in order not to use control-type keys, but we couldn't get the shortkeys to work at all, so we don't know if they would have produced the same problem. The only thing I can think of that would produce that keyboard-locking (for lack of a more accurate term) result is an accessibility setting called StickyKeys. But how could the keyboard shortcut BOTH trigger the macro and trigger StickyKeys? Another thing that may or may not be related is that sometimes Macro Express would act as if I had two macros open for editing, but I could only see one. And sometimes after I edited a macro, it seemed as if the older version was still running. The keyboard shortcut that DIDN'T seem to cause the keyboard-locking problem was Ctrl+F12, so in the end I assigned the simplest macro to Ctrl+F12 so my friend would have something. Others we had tried included Ctrl+G, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+Z, and Ctrl+F11. A few others didn't work at all but obviously because some other definition, I think in Windows, was taking precedence. Yet Macro Express always told me that the keyboard shortcuts were "not in use." (I guess that just means "not in use in Macro Express"--regardless of whether they currently do something else in Windows or the application.) Meanwhile, none of the keyboard shortcuts lock up MY keyboard. My friend's system is very similar to mine, we both have Windows XP SP2 and Office 2003 (they were even built by the same local builder), but I have way more programs installed than she does. In short, why does the keyboard lock up, and can I prevent that?

Hi rberg, I've been out of town and then didn't get over to my friend's until yesterday. Turns out the problem was the scope. When I wrote the macro it started in Adobe Acrobat on my system. My friend was using Reader, not Acrobat. I had changed the program to start in to Reader, but I hadn't known that I had to change the scope separately. It was Stan's suggestion of changing the scope to global that made me look at the scope. But once the macros began to run, I encountered another problem entirely. I'll start a new thread for that.

Hi Bob, The keyboard shortcut still showed up everywhere I looked. I even tried making a different shortcut, twice, to see if a simpler shortcut might work. I would think it is not speicific shortcuts that are the problem, given that NONE of them worked and they also did not invoke any other actions within the application. If they were programmed to do something else, wouldnt they have done that something else instead of running my macro? Meg

I forgot to say "thanks" for your reply! Much appreciated.

HI Stan, I did try restarting Macro Express while I was there. I'll look into the firewall etc. That's a great idea about closing down applications one by one.

I wrote a macro for a friend but it won't run on her system. The macro is supposed to select a word or words in Adobe Acrobat Professional 8, copy it into a Word document, type a tab, and return to Acrobat. (There are four variations of the macro with some slight differences--and not all of them return to Acrobat. Some just stop after copying into Word so that the user can type in other things.) I set the macros up and tested them thoroughly on my system in the trial version of Macro Express Then I went to my friend's house, installed the trial version of Macro Express, copied my *mex file onto her system, and opened the macro file; the macro was there, everything seemed fine. BUT the macro just doesn't even start. She's working in Adobe Reader 6, not Adobe Acrobat, but I thought it should still work (I changed the path appropriately for the last step) since we are only dealing with keyboard shortcuts and Windows copying/pasting operations and switching windows. (Originally I thought she was working in a trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro 7.) It's as if her system isn't reading the keyboard shortcut for the macro, so nothing happens. We're both on Windows XP SP2 and Word 2003, so it appears the only significant difference in the two situations is that she's in Reader and I'm in Acrobat. I tried "Restore Keyboard and Mouse Hooks," but that didn't make a difference. The only other thing is that I didn't export my macros and then import them; I just copied the file. But they looked just the same in the Script Editor as they did on my system. What could be the problem??

Hi rberg, Thanks. Meanwhile I found Activate Window in the help file and that works fine. Yes, that way I don't have to worry about the user possibly having more than two windows running. Meg

Greetings, I'm trying to make a macro in Macro Express (first capturing and then editing with Script Editor), and I'm unable to successfully reproduce the action of changing windows using Alt-Tab. What I'm doing is switching windows between Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word to paste something that I've copied from the Acrbat file into the Word file. I thought I had it captured, but the Alt-Tab action doesn't play back. Instead, it seems that Adobe Acrobat interprets it in some other way and then copies my text into what may be a comment box. Obviously, we're never getting out of the Acrobat window... Should Alt-Tab be reproducible? Or is there some other or better way to have the macro switch windows? Thanks for any help. Meg