copying text selection in external app

[fishysheep]

Hi, need to select block of plain text from external app window (IE). tried using getWindowDC and getWindowRect without success. Code so far is:

ie = New SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = True
ie.Navigate("

http://www.whatever.com")

mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE + MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE, 20000, 47000, 0, 0) 'move to text
singleClickMouse(3) 'fn to mousedown/up simulate click
SendKeys.Flush()
SendKeys.Sendwait("^C") 'copy

Above works fine, mouse moves to correct co-ords, click three times to select text, and copies.

But what I need to acheive is to be able to copy a block of selected text - so then I tried this:

mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE + MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE, 20000, 47000, 0, 0) 'move to text
mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN, 0, 0, 0, 0)
mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE + MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE, 26000, 53000, 0, 0)
mouse_event(MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP, 0, 0, 0, 0)
SendKeys.SendWait("^C") 'copy

above does select the text, but nothing is copied. I've tried keybd_event instead of sendkeys.sendwait but that didn't work either. Also tried it without mouse_leftup statement.

Any suggestions grateuflly accepted - still convinced there is a better way to tackle this

ta

 

[jebenson]

Since the text you want is displayed in IE, would it be possible for you to find out what file is being displayed by IE, grab that file and then get the text you want?



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[fishysheep]

if the text was part of html source then I'd be able to do that - since posting the above this text I've realised it's most likely part of an applet. From everything I've read it would seem that applet text is refused by the sytem clipboard, and if I use vb6/net then nothing is copied to the clipboard and .net reports "untrusted".

but, but... if I do a manual highlight and ctrl + c and paste .... I get the data. In the case of MSword I get get the formatting and styles as well - which would seem to imply that it's html. So if msword can read it - why the hell can't .net?