SendText to Remote Desktop application

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SandyDoss
Junior Coder
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 12:47 am

SendText to Remote Desktop application

Post by SandyDoss » Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:17 pm

Hello,

I witnessed some bizarre behavior today in a macro using SendText to move data to an input field on a remote desktop application. The macro is being used to do simple data entry. One of the receiving fields is a dropdown, formatted with multiple columns, i.e. ID: 012345 Term Date: 02/14/2017 There are multiple rows in this dropdown, and the intent is to pass to this field the id #, have it highlight, then tab to select it. In order to do this, I need to string 'ID: ' + a 6 digit formatted number. In manual key entry, keying the data string ID: 012345 is just enough to get me what I need.

On my pc (Windows 8.1) I can format the above into a variable, use SendText to send to the remote desktop, and life is good. Every time. No exception.

On a production pc (Windows 10), where we are running a .exe of the macro, I can send ID: 012345 and the ID: portion gets displayed in the field as id; (as in, caps get changed to lower case and the colon changes to a semi-colon) - not everytime, but way too often to be ignored.

The remote desktop connection is the same in both cases. Focus is on the remote desktop during the SendText commands.

I have tried formatting ID: 012345 into a single variable and doing SendText once.
I have tried doing SendText with ID: %variable%
I have tried doing SendText with ID: (with two spaces after the colon)
then SendText with %variable%
I have adjusted time between commands up and down.
I have tried pressing CapsLock at the beginning of the macro, and the first time I focus on the remote desktop.

One other thing to note: The production pc has 2 monitors, while mine uses only 1. I'm exploring the implications of that, as, I also saw that my one monitor macro sometimes lost it's way on the two monitor pc. I've seen the commands to determine a count of monitors, move screens etc so that is my task this weekend.

While I don't think this is uniquely a MacroScheduler issue, I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this and possibly has some suggestions for me?

Thanks in advance

Sandy

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Marcus Tettmar
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Posts: 7380
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Location: Dorset, UK
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Re: SendText to Remote Desktop application

Post by Marcus Tettmar » Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:44 am

Sounds like SHIFT is down, or Caps Lock is on. Have you tried adding the command

CapsOff

Try also slowing down the keysend rate. Sending over a remote connection could mean keys are being lost if sent too fast:

Let>SK_DELAY=20

(adds a 20ms delay between each character).
Marcus Tettmar
http://mjtnet.com/blog/ | http://twitter.com/marcustettmar

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SandyDoss
Junior Coder
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 12:47 am

Re: SendText to Remote Desktop application

Post by SandyDoss » Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:22 pm

Marcus,

Thanks so much for your advice. The SK_DELAY is partially the winner, here, in that slowing down the rate at which the characters were sent really enabled us to see just what was happening.

We tried CapsOff, as well, but what really fixed it was CapsOff AND pressing Shift before sending the data. It doesn't make much sense, except that my googling has returned to me many instances of 'how do you turn off caps lock on a remote system?'.

I would have thought that CapsOn would accomplish the same thing.

At any rate, life is good. Thanks for the quick response. Y'all have a great support team!

Sandy

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