Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

When using the RunProgram command in Macro Scheduler to run an app you usually need to know the path (unless it’s a system app already in the path) and executable name. Sometimes it’s not obvious what that is. You might start Microsoft Word, or Internet Explorer several times a day without knowing or caring what its exe name and path is. So when you come to write a macro which calls it how do you find out what it is? Well you might think to right click on the application’s shortcut and look at the properties. But this doesn’t always help. If I click on the MS Access shortcut in my Start menu it seems to point to yet another shortcut. I could locate that shortcut and look at that I suppose, but I’m an impatient kind of guy and don’t like being sent around the houses. No, there’s a quicker way:

• Start the application if it is not already running.
• Hit Win-R to get the Run dialog and type msconfig32 and hit Enter
• In the System Information window expand “Software Environment” and click on “Running Tasks”
• You will see a list of running processes with their Path shown in the second column

In Vista you can also do the following:

• Start the application if it is not already running.
• Start Task Manager (which you can do quickly by right clicking on the task bar and selecting “Task Manager”).
• Look down the list (you can sort it by name or description) to find the application.
• Now you can right click on the application’s entry and select Properties and it will show you it’s location. Or right click and select “Open File Location” to see it in an Explorer window.

The location field in the Properties box of Task Manager can be selected, so you can just copy this to Macro Scheduler.

So, even if you don’t know where an application is installed or what its executable name is, it’s easy to find that out once it’s running.

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Updated 23/01/09 for an XP solution. Thanks to Dick Lockey for pointing out my Task Manager solution was Vista only.

A while back I got this comment in an email:

“I loved Macro Scheduler. Unfortunately, I’m now working exclusively on Mac and Linux boxes. I have kept a copy of Macro Scheduler, just in case I ever return to Windows, and have recommended it to many friends (2 of which have purchased copies).  After 2 years without Windows, I have to say that I don’t miss Windows, but I do miss Macro Scheduler.”

Despite the fact that we’ve lost a customer to Linux, I think that’s quite an endorsement. Linux has always catered to the sysadmin with its rich command line interface, and all Linux tools, utilities and system apps provide a command line processor. Linux also comes with a number of built-in scripting languages and an advanced scheduler called Cron. So Linux is made for being automated. Windows, on the other hand, was designed almost exclusively for human users and is purely graphical. Therefore, tools like Macro Scheduler are required to automate Windows applications. Nice to hear how important Macro Scheduler was to this sysadmin when he had to put up with Windows 🙂