SendKeys stops sending keys???

[oltran]

Hi,

I have an HTML form that when filled out will run a DOS like program and send keys to it to automate a few processes. The problem is that somewhere in the middle sendkeys stops. I ran the program using notepad and sendkeys completes but using this other application it stops at the same place every time. I'm not doing anything fancy like using sendkeys to File>Edit... just to send text to the program. Also, its not stopping in an obvious place where the program would reject anything sent to it, it stops in the middle of a note field in the program.

any ideas?

Thanks a bunch!
Jason

 

[dilettante]

SendKeys isn't really very reliable. Any number of things can happen to stop your SendKeys messages from reaching the right program.

"DOS-like?" File|Edit sounds more like a GUI program, even if a DOS GUI-ish program like Edit.exe or something.

If it were a simple DOS program I'd suggest using WShell.Exec instead of WShell.Run, then send stuff to the program's stdin stream. I don't know how to send things like ALT keys via stdin though: such programs usually read the keyboard messages from Windows (or for DOS the keyboard buffer) directly.

Does this external program expose an OLE Automation interface you can script?