Some pre-sales questions we get seem to suggest that the user lacks basic Windows skills. What surprises me is that these questions are often from people working in company IT departments. Their ability to comprehend how to automate something appears to be diminished by their inability to use a PC effectively. Perhaps I’m being unfair – I guess it’s easy to forget that there’s another way to do something.
For example. We might get asked:
“How do I make my macro click on a desktop shortcut if I don’t know where that desktop shortcut is going to be, and I want the macro to work on any PC where the desktop shortcut could be in different places?”.
Think about it for a second. The answer is that you do NOT click on the desktop shortcut. Why would you? The clue is in the name – a shortcut is .. a shortcut to something. Why would you record or write a macro that clicks on an icon when the macro simply needs to run whatever the shortcut runs? Right click on the shortcut to show its properties and look at what the shortcut executes. Copy that into your script and have the Run or ExecuteFile command run it.
As I said in Top Tips for Reliable Macros: Don’t automate mouse clicks or keystrokes just to start an application!
Now, even if you did want to select a desktop shortcut, there’s still another way to do it without needing to know or care where it is. Just type it. If you focus the desktop and type the name of a desktop shortcut on the keyboard it will get selected. This is what I call “drill down” and it works on most lists. So your macro could just send the text of the item.
When we get asked questions like this I’m always a little surprised. I would have expected someone in an IT department to know what a desktop shortcut is and also to know that you can control Windows via the keyboard.
Of course, if you really, really want to create a macro that double clicks on a shortcut using the mouse and want it to find its position you can do that with image recognition. In some applications, like the one I wrote about yesterday, that is the only way to go. But it’s overkill if you just want to start an application, or run a file.
See also: Keyboard Shortcuts; Top Tips for Reliable Macros
