jleslie48

Old time programmer and brand new to MEP but I have a thought on this. I see MEP has the ability to read a file. To bridge a computer shutdown or even between two macros, one can use a file as depot for variables. As part of the shutdown of a macro it writes out values to a file, and on its startup it reads them in as the override of default values. This is basicially how the xxx.ini functionality of windows bascially works, no reason not to follow that paradigm. In the past I've used this for inter-process communcation (read parameter passing) from one process to another. The only real issue in accomplishing this is what facilities are available in MEP for string parsing, but I will have to defer that answer to those who know MEP better. I imagine I'll be in a similar need in a short timeframe myself... - Jleslie48

Thanks everybody for your responses. rberg, despite my butchering of the english language, you've got my issue well understood. What you've explained is exactly how I *hoped* ME would work. I realize that the more I "program" keystrokes vs mouse movements the far better off I'll be in the long run. Alas I'm required to automate a VB Script that was very poorly written and many of required human interface commands are mouse only. Even something like ^A to hi-light all the choices of the selection box is not programmed, and it also does not remember the settings of radio buttons, check boxes, etc when I re-run the VB script. So my attack plan is so: 1) use the recording and saving feature of ME to save off a script and make sure it actually does all the button pushes and jumps through all the hoops of my user application. 2) analyze the script in script editor and learn the translation of "human clicking and typing" to ME's scripting language. If I used keystrokes liberally in my original recording of the macro, I should see these more clearly in the script and I can use them as beacons. 3) I can either save off this macro as an independent macro or some kind of procedure/function in ME. 4) I need to develop a wrapper macro that will prompt me for the directory that I want to process, pick out the files in that directory one by one and apply that filename to the procedure/macro defined in step 3) above. I've been reading up, it seems this involves the "repeat with folder" command, and a %t1% variable although I'm not clear how the %t1% variable gets associated with the "repeat with folder" command. I imagine that the procedure from step 3) will allow me use the %t1% parameter in the section where I need to type in the filename for the VB script. Thanks again for all the input, and I hope you folks won't mind a few follow-up questions as I try this stuff out. sincerely jleslie48

Ok, so here's my situation. My boss bought this excel addin that asks for a filename, and then after you type in the filename a dialog box opens that allows many choices. Drop down lists to choose items, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc, and then a submit button. you pick all the options you want, and then submit it, wait a few seconds, and the spreadsheet is filled. I then save the spreadsheet based on the name of the file used, concatenating "_processed.xls" to the filename (and stripping the old extension off of it.) So for example if the data file is "test_run.dat" the processed file is saved as "test_run_processed.xls" First question, Macro expresss [pro] can script this all up with a record and save as macro ability correct? Next question. Now that I have a macro to process a specific file, I want to remove all references to that specific file (in the example "test_run.dat") and have ME prompt the user for a directory, and have ME loop through all the files in that directory applying each of the filenames to the macro. Is this level of control in scope for ME?? TIA, Jleslie48