Macro Recording and Automating Windows with Macro Scheduler – Tips & News
UPDATE: 25/09/2012 – Macro Scheduler now includes some native Excel functions (XLOpen, XLGetCell, XLSetCell) etc. DDE is also no longer supported in the latest version of Excel. Using DBQuery, as described here, is still a very useful way to retrieve Excel data, especially for doing SQL style lookups. Last July I wrote this post summarising […]
Macro Scheduler 10.1 includes four functions for connecting to databases, querying and modifying data: DBConnect DBQuery DBExec DBClose Connecting to a Database Before you can connect to a database you’ll need to make sure you have the required OLE DB/ODBC drivers installed. You can see what drivers are already installed under Control Panel > Administrative […]
Dick Lockey has written a nice example in Scripts ‘n Tips showing a good use of the Include statement. Include allows you to include other scripts in your code. A good use of this is to keep commonly used subroutines, VBScript code, or dialogs in scripts that you can then Include in your macros, rather […]
Common questions we receive are things like “What’s the best way to learn more about Macro Scheduler?”, or “How can I advance my Macro Scheduler skills?”. You may be just getting started, or you may be wondering whether you can improve one of your scripts or how to tackle another process. There are a number […]
The purpose of embedding a file into a Macro Scheduler script is to be able to have a script use that file on a computer that might not have the file or that the file is in an unknown location. For example a spreadsheet or database file could be embedded so that the script could […]
Most of the time when we are automating a process we are able to predict the sequence of events. We are working with a deterministic process and a linear flow of actions. But there are occasions when things can happen during a process that we cannot predict precisely. E.g.: We might know that a dialog […]
In this post I discussed the Text Capture commands and explained what kind of text can be captured. To try out the text capture functionality launch the latest version of Macro Scheduler. Click New to create a new script and then in the Code Builder locate the “Text Capture Wizard”. Point the mouse at some […]
As I have mentioned previously, Macro Scheduler 10 introduces some powerful new commands for capturing screen text. In this post I aim to explain what kinds of text can be captured with these new commands and why there will always be some text that cannot be retrieved. First let’s look at how the existing functions, […]
Something that comes up now and then is whether or not compiled Macro Scheduler macros can respond to hot-keys. Macro Scheduler itself lets you assign system-wide hot-keys to macros so that when you hit that key combination, no matter where you are in Windows, the macro will be fired. Some people want to be able […]
A short roundup of resources and ideas for using Macro Scheduler for system and software monitoring. Event Log Monitoring Here’s a tip showing how to create a script to monitor event log messages: http://www.mjtnet.com/usergroup/viewtopic.php?t=4256 Process/Service Monitoring This script demonstrates a function called IsProcessRunning to check if a specific process is running. Use it to create […]