kevin

Here is another approach using two macros. Suppose you want the delay to be 45 seconds. First macro: - Create a Scheduled Macro set to fire of every 45 seconds. - Put your macro commands in it. - Near the beginning of the macro include a Macro Disable command and enter this macro's name. - Disable the macro. Second macro: - Create a macro that runs when Macro Express is started (At Startup) - In this macro include a Macro Enable command and enter the name of the first macro.

Not at this time. This requires something called a 'Service'. We are researching this for a future release of Macro Express. This is not possible for the password entered when logging into Windows. It may be possible when logging into a web page or another program.

Macro Express does not recognize the extra mouse buttons. However, if, using the manufacturer's software, you can program the buttons to output a hotkey, you could then write a macro to perform other functions. Try programming one of the mouse buttons to type Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M and then write a macro with an activation of Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M.

When I tried to duplicate this I found the opposite. For me, Macro Express will not enable the 'Display e-mail sent notification' when I have an attachment. This has been confirmed as a bug and will be fixed.

Cyberchief, You said "...most of the time Macro Express crashes alltogether." When this occurs does the ISS Bug Reporter come up? Have you sent a crash report? We would like to find out what is happening when the crash occurs.

Correct.

It depends on whether you are prompting for a folder or a filename. The Variable Set String %T1% from Folder Name does not have a way to select which folder to start in. But, the Variable Set String %T1% from File Name does. To do this just set the variable that the Variable Set String from File Name will use to a value prior to the Variable Set String from File Name. Like this: Variable Set String %T1% "e:\temp" Variable Set String %T1% from File Name

Try the Variable Set From File Path macro command. You can choose which part of filepath to place in specific variables. If the pathname is already in a variable, put that variable in the Filename/Path: field.

The End If terminates an If block like this: If Variable %T1% does not contain "DONE" // <Do some // macro commands // here> End If To terminate a macro from within an If block you need to use either the Macro Return or the Macro Stop. Maybe something like this would work: If Variable %T1% does not contain "PAID" // <Do some // macro commands // here> Else Macro Return End If

All minor updates are free. That is, if you own a Macro Express 3 license, then your license will work in all Macro Express 3.x versions. However, when the next major version is released, such as Macro Express 4, you will need to purchase a new license. Generally, existing license holders receive a 50% discount off the new license price. See this page for a longer explanation: http://www.macros.com/upgrade.htm To be notified when a new version is available, you should subscribe to the Macro Express News email newsletter. Emails are sent whenever a new version of Macro Express is released. The newsletter also contains tips, sample macros, and other information about Macro Express. To view past issues visit http://www.macros.com/newsletters/MENews.htm. To subscribe, visit http://www.macros.com/esubs.htm.

We have confirmed that this limitation exists in Windows 98, Me, and 95. While the underlying cause is with Windows itself, we have identified a possible workaround that may fix this. We will be looking at this for a future release of Macro Express. In the meantime, we will update the documentation to include a warning.

The Alt+Space works because Macro Express, when it sees Alt+Space, can send something different to the remainder of the hook chain. Win+E does not work because Windows does not send Win+E to Macro Express. Note that Windows has two opportunities to act on a keystroke. Before it is sent down the hook chain or after. Windows reacts to Alt+Space after the hook chain but it reacts to Win+E before the hook chain.

Windows sets the rules about how keystrokes are handled. What Windows wants, Windows gets. Macro Express interfaces with Windows using the Windows Hooks. When a key is pressed, it is passed to Windows, passed to Macro Express, Macro Express passes it back to Windows and Windows passes it to the application. Windows processes certain keystrokes without sending them through the 'hook chain'. If Windows does not send it to Macro Express or acts on it before sending it to Macro Express, then Macro Express cannot intercept it. Certain key combinations that involve the Win key do this.

Then you have to give that application focus and Text Type into it. Windows controls which programs receive keystrokes and mouse events. The choices are either the program with focus or, if supported, via Windows Controls.

I, of course, use Macro Express extensively for both business and personal tasks. I don't always realize how much I depend on Macro Express until I try to use a computer without it. Shameless Plug: For more stories like Markter's about how Macro Express is used, visit http://www.macros.com/custuses.htm.

We have had many requests for Goto and Label commands to allow macro execution to skip back to a previous point in the macro. It looks like this will be added to a future version of Macro Express. It is not in the current version. You might find it useful to put the part of the macro that needs to be repeated into a separate 'No Activation' macro. Then use the Macro Run command to run it at the appropriate points in your macro. Use the Break command to terminate a loop such as a Repeat loop, an ASCII Text Begin/End Process loop, or a Text File Begin/End Process loop. Here is an example of how to use the Break command: Repeat Until %T1% <> %T1% // Put commands to read from the file here // Do something to indicate that the macro has processed all of the names // For this example, setting T2 to DONE indicates all the names have been processed If Variable %T2% = "DONE" Break End If Repeat End

You might have success if you use the Wait for Web Page command and leave the url blank. This will tell your macro to wait until IE is no longer busy, but it does not care which web address was loaded. If that does not work you could use the Get Pixel Color in a macro to determine when the web page has finshed loading when the 'progress bar' in the status line indicates the page has fully loaded. Here is a discussion in this forum about using Get Pixel Color command: http://pgmacros.com/community/index.php?sh...26&hl=Get+Pixel. And here is an example of this technique used to implement Wait for Web Page in Netscape: http://www.macros.com/usermacs/umwaitwebpagen.htm. This could be adapted for use in IE, Opera or Firefox.

Try Windows Controls and the "Send Text to Control" option in the Text Type command. As Floyd points out, this will work if the applications are written to support Window Controls.

Sure. Create a macro with a HotKey activation of Alt+Space and use the Text Type command to type whatever you want instead of Alt+Space. You could use the Scope property so this macro will only run when application ABC has focus and Alt+Space will work normally for all other applications.

Nevada, Thank you for provided details about your test. I was able to duplicate this. It turns out that the key piece of information is that you are using Windows 98. You have identified a previously undocumented limitation. The Clipboard Save Text command works fine in Windows XP. On Windows 98 only the first 64K of the clipboard is saved. This limitation also exists for the Variable Set String %T1% from Clipboard command. We will add a note to the documentation describing this. Our initial research indicates that the limitation may affect Windows 98/Me/95 users.

Cyberchief, Yes you can accomplish this with "just Macro Express." The PGM Functions Library is just a collection of useful routines written using existing macro commands. The value of the PGM Functions Library is that you don't have to figure out how to accomplish something you need. Someone has already written it and you save time. Here is what I would to do count the number of times a substring occurs in a string. 1. Copy the string 2. Working with the copy, use the Variable Set Integer %N1% from Position of Text in Variable %T1% command to find out if the substring appears in the string (N1 will be non-zero). 3. Increment a counter (perhaps N2). 4. Delete from the beginning of the string to the end of the substring in the string. - a. Increment N1 by the length of the substring, in this case 3 - b. Delete N1 characters from the beginning of T1. 5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until the macro determines that there are no more occurences of the substring (N1 will be 0). N2 will contain the count. I don't know if this is how the PGM Functions Library does this. It may use another technique. As you can see, you can accomplish this with existing macro commands. But, you would save time, and your employer's money, using something that has already been written.

Is the game online? Many online games use Java and some versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) do not work with macros. The latest version of the JRE seems to work better: www.puzzleconnection.com/puzzleplayer/jre.htm Other programs intentionally disallow macros by altering the Windows hooks. Some programs disable automated mouse events, others disable automated keyboard events and still others disable both. On these types of programs mouse events and keystrokes still work when you manually perform them from your mouse or keyboard. Some password entry dialog boxes do this and, as you may have discovered, so do some games.

Each macro command has a 64K (65,536) limit. If you were to use the Variable Set String command, you could only use a string 64K in size or smaller. There is not, however, a limit on the number of characters that can be contained in a variable. Some macros read the content of mulit-gigabyte files files into variables. However, it should be noted that %T% variables are string variables. That is, they were designed to hold text, not binary data. Text is defined as viewable characters. (For the technical, values of 20 hex through ff hex plus a few non-printable characters such as Carriage Return (CR), Linefeed (LF) and Tab (HT).) If you put something in the variable that contains, for example, an ASCII 0 (a character value of 00 hex (NUL)), then you may not be able to copy all of the content of that variable to another variable. The result of Paul's test macro indicates that Macro Express is not limiting what is read from the clipboard. Since your macro seems to be losing information we need to look elsewhere for the explanation. Perhaps the information has been properly retrieved from the clipboard but it contains non-text characters. These non-text characters could make it seem like the information is missing when in fact it is simply inaccessible. Addendum: I had another thought: What are you copying from? If you are, for example, within a Word document, when you copy information from the screen to the clipboard, the clipboard may contain non-printable characters. The variable may contain the full 270K of data but you may not be able to access beyond a certain point.

You can place any number of macro commands between the ASCII File Begin Process and ASCII File End Process commands so there is no problem doing "a small task on that page" before moving on to the next iteration. The Web Site command opens up a new instance of the browser. However, you may be able to perform one Web Site command outside the ASCII File Begin/End Process loop and use a Text Type command to go to a new url. This technique requires a test for a specific browser. To go to the Address field in IE or Firefox you need to type ALT+d. To get to the Address field in Netscape you need to type ALT+l (lowercase L). Something like this may work: Note that this example determines what browser is running and tries to adapt to that browser. The Wait for Web Page command only works with IE. There are techniques you can use to perform a Wait for Web Page type function for other browsers using macro commands. Here are a few references: Sample macro to wait for Web Page in Netscape: www.macros.com/usermacs/umwaitwebpagen.htm Forum discussions: pgmacros.com/community/index.php?showtopic=451&hl=Wait+web+page pgmacros.com/community/index.php?showtopic=360&hl=Wait+web+page

Macro Express cannot read directly from an Excel file. I can think of two options. You can open Excel and move through the spreadsheet one cell at a time. Copy each cell to the clipboard and then read the clipboard into a %T% variable. Excel can export a spreadsheet in a .csv format. Using the ASCII Text Begin Process and ASCII Text End Process commands your macro can loop through each record placing the content of that record in a %T% variable. Once you have the content of the cell in a variable you can use one of the many Variable Modify commands to manipulate the text. Here is a quick example using the ASCII Text Begin/End Process command. This example assumes you have already created the .csv file. ASCII File Begin Process: "text.csv" (Comma Delimited Text ) Web Site: http://www.fakepage.com/editjob.php?jobnumber=%T1% [Default Browser - Wait to load] // Other macro commands here ASCII File End Process This example uses the 'Wait for Web Page' option in the Web Site command to eliminate the need for a second macro command.