December 27, 2013

Christmas Morning 1972 – Macro Scheduler Arcade – From JRL

Filed under: General,Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 10:43 am

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I expect many of you are still enjoying some holiday time. Well if you are here’s some Macro Scheduler fun from forum regular JRL.

Yes, it’s a two player 1970s computer game written entirely with Macro Scheduler code. Here’s the code

See JRL’s forum post and grab the code here: http://www.mjtnet.com/usergroup/christmas-morning-1972-t8106.html

Paste it into a new Macro Scheduler macro, hit run and off you go.  Up and down arrows control the right hand paddle, A/Z the left. Enter to start, Esc to end.  Happy Memories! Enjoy 🙂

If you don’t have Macro Scheduler you can download a trial version here.

December 10, 2013

Print Excel File Automatically

Filed under: Macro Recorder,Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 10:41 am

Thanks to Alberto Voli for this little tip.  The code below can be used to print an Excel file without having to manipulate the printer dialogs.  It uses VBScript to interface with Excels’ COM object model to call it’s PrintOut method.

Place the VBSTART .. VBEND lines near the top of your script ready for use. To use modify the path to the Excel file in the VBRun line and place that line where needed.

You can use this approach with other Microsoft Office Apps, e.g. Word. A good tip is to record a macro within Excel or Word using it’s own macro recorder. This will create VBA code. You can then view the VBA code to figure out what objects and methods you need. You can then convert it to VBScript which you can run inside Macro Scheduler.

December 9, 2013

Winter Sale – 25% Off New Licenses

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 2:11 pm

Get 25% off new Macro Scheduler licenses until the end of this month.

For the rest of December 2013 we’re offering 25% off all new license sales.  Just use the following coupon code:

XMAS2013

This code is valid for all editions of Macro Scheduler and can be redeemed at http://www.mjtnet.com/pricing.htm (Enter the code on the cart/checkout page).

November 18, 2013

PC Audio At Work – Screencasts

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 4:00 pm

We’re finding screencasts more and more effective in a technical support and training role.  But it occurs to me that not everyone has audio.  At one of our large clients most PCs – even those in the IT department – don’t have audio capabilities.  I guess this could be common among the larger corporations.

If so many of our videos and the screencasts we send out would be nigh on useless because a major part of their benefit is that we can explain what is going on.  Just watching us click on the screen won’t always be enough.

I’m seeing screencasts and video being used more and more online.  We’re not the only people doing this.  So perhaps things will change.  But I’d be interested to know if you find this a problem at your place of work.  Feel free to comment below.

November 11, 2013

Costly Mistake or Competitor Sabotage?

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 3:54 pm

Microsoft advertising their advertising network using Google’s advertising network.

Is this a typo from Microsoft or are Google having a chuckle.

Either way Google are making money out these useless clicks 🙂

Remembrance

Filed under: Uncategorized — Marcus Tettmar @ 12:50 pm

Useless Box Kit

Filed under: Pointless but Fun — Marcus Tettmar @ 12:02 pm

I rather like this. I thought you might too:

And it gives me an idea.

This struck me as being rather like a hardware equivalent to the old “Hello World” type program most people start out with.  I remember learning BBC Basic with something like this:

10 Print “Hello”
20 Goto 10

Does anyone have a totally useless but fun Macro Scheduler macro?

October 24, 2013

Making your macros intelligent with If, Else, and Endif

Filed under: Scripting — Dorian @ 8:46 am
I’m often asked how to make a macro behave differently based on certain criteria.

The power and flexibility of Macro Scheduler makes this an easy task.

There are hundreds of different reasons you might want to do this.  Maybe it’s dependent on :

  • The answer to a question.
  • The success/failure of an operation.
  • The contents of a file.
  • If a file or folder exists.
  • If a certain mathematical goal is reached (e.g. if>count=100).
  • If a certain image is visible on the screen.
  • If the value of a cell in an Excel spreadsheet matches your requirement.
  • If an email was/wasn’t successfully sent.
  • If a value on a web page matches your criteria.
  • The day/date/time or year

That’s just a handful of the many hundreds of variables we can check, but the basic rules of IF, Else, and Endif are always the same.
Let’s use asking a simple yes/no question as an example.  We simply tell the macro something like this:

Ask a yes/no question

If the answer is yes
Then do this

If the answer is no
Then do that

It’s that simple!  So, how do we put that into simple Macro Scheduler language?  Here’s how :

//ask a yes/no question
Ask>Do you like brussel sprouts?,question

//depending on the answer given, the macro will execute *one* of the two lines below, then continue on with the rest of the script
If>%question%=YES
    MessageModal>I agree, but let's keep it our secret
Else
    MessageModal>Right.  They're ghastly
Endif

//you can abbreviate messagemodal to mdl
mdl>OK, on with the rest of this script.
Without all the comments :
Ask>Do you like brussel sprouts?,question

If>%question%=YES
    MessageModal>I agree, but let's keep it our secret
Else
    MessageModal>Right.  They're ghastly
Endif

mdl>OK, on with the rest of this script.
So, in short, we are doing this :
If>your condition is/isn't met
  //do this

//or else
Else
  //do that

Endif
“Else”, is optional.  If you don’t need an “else”, just leave it out.  All you need is the If and Endif.  This is for if we just need to tell a macro to perform a certain action based on your criteria, but not an alternative action if the criteria is not met.
If>your condition is met
  //This line only executes if the condition is met, otherwise it's ignored
Endif
Helpfile links for your reference : AskIfMessagemodal

Questions? Reply to this thread. Our support team and our community are always happy to help.

October 3, 2013

Automating Google

Filed under: Automation,Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:59 pm

This has come up a few times lately so I thought I’d post it here.

One or two people have been asking about writing a Macro Scheduler script that performs a Google search and pulls back the resulting URLs. They have discovered that trying to automate Google can be awkward because of the dynamic nature of the page. As soon as you type in the search box the page changes because it is updating in real time.

Some people suggested using HTTPRequest to get the page content directly and then parse it with RegEx. This can be done but is also tricky because you’re getting back all the dynamic code and other stuff like adwords ads etc and it is hard to find the right patterns.

There’s an easier way. Use their API URL instead. E.g.:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=Apple%20Pie&rsz=large&start=1

This performs a search for “Apple Pie”. Try it in your browser and you’ll see the content is less cluttered and it is easy to parse. It returns 8 results. For the next 8 you would change the start parameter to 9, and so on.

So here’s a simple example script which takes a search term, specifies how many results to get, extracts the URLs and writes them to a text file:

September 26, 2013

Macro Scheduler in the Winter Olympics

Filed under: Announcements,Automation,Macro Recorder — Marcus Tettmar @ 12:29 pm

Macro Scheduler on Skis? No, not exactly. But your favourite automation software and macro recorder will apparently be helping behind the scenes at the Winter Olympics next year in Sochi.

I received this message from Stefano Frattini, DT Manager at Olympic Broadcasting Services SL, yesterday:

You’ll be happy to know that a small Macro Scheduler script will be running on a service channel machine at the Sochi Olympics next year. The script is controlling the download, verification and sorting of weather information files which actually feed a TV channel from OBS (Host Broadcaster) called Olympic Weather Channel. This channel is distributed to all the Rights Holder Broadcasters during the SOCHI Olympic Games.

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