General product and approach questions

1medic · Post by **1medic** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 11:56 am

Hi, I'm new to the product/forum and have some general question about the product.

Two of the things I do frequently on the computer involve:
a) FTPing files and manipulating files on webserver or
b) Filling in web forms.

Do I need the Web automation product to fill web forms?

I use Excel an awful lot as well.

I hope to read data from spreadsheets to pass to the 2 processes I mentioned above.

What would be the best approach for automating Excel? Should I look more into Excel VBA? Someone mentioned something called DDE which I never heard of - Should I expect to learn about this?

Thanks. Between Excel, FTP and Webforms I'll have 90% of my processes covered.

Luke

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:10 am

Hi,

FTPing is straighforward using the built in FTP functions.

For filling in Web forms the easiest way to create code to do this is to use WebRecorder. However, many forms can be automated with VBScript but this requires more hand-coding and a better understanding of the forms and html. As an example see:

http://www.mjtnet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1461

The simplest way to get data to/from Excel is to use DDE. See the following example:

http://www.mjtnet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1482

There is also a sample script that comes with Macro Scheduler which demonstrates retrieving information from Excel.