Dynamic Selector (variable in selector) in Desktop Automation

[HellitonWoo]

Hi fellow users,

Has anyone found a solution to use "variable" in the selector?

For instance, the application may have a table, to click and type into the table, I need the index of the row and column.

Thus it would be nice to create a variable to help to point to the row that I'm about the click.

I've tried referring the variable using %var%, but it won't work.

BR

Helliton

[adijain · Accepted solution]

Hello @HellitonWoo,

Variables can be parsed in CSS and UI selectors in Power Automate Desktop. To do that please follow the steps below:

• Search for the element that needs to be edited in the UI elements pane, right click on the element and go to edit selectors.
• Navigate to the selector builder which can be used to easily customize the selector and click on "custom" toggle button.
  • 
• Now for your case you would need to parse the variable %var_row% in the table selector attribute. e.g. shown in the screenshot below:
  • 

Hope the above helps. Please let us know the target selector path and variable name to be parsed if you encounter any issues. Thanks!  

[HellitonWoo]

@adijain 

Thanks for the answer!

This is the selector, and the way it worked exactly as explained:

window[Class="#32770"][Name="New Invoice"] > list[Class="SysListView32"] > listitem[Id="ListViewItem-%row_nr%"] > text[Id="ListViewSubItem-%col_nr%"]

[Anonymous]

Hi

I struggled a bit with using a dynamic selector as well untill I understood that in order for it to work, "Custom" HAS to be toggled 🙂 

Best Regards

Mikkel

[Kevin77]

Hi Guyz,

Please help to solve this dynamic selector div[Id="screenarea2.B10"].

[adijain]

Hi @Kevin77, you can customize the selector to this: 

iframe[Id="application-Shell-startGUI"] > div[Id^="screenarea2"]

this can be done either by hitting the custom button or changing the div's Id attribute operator to "Starts with"

[RiiG]

Hi

can variables be used in attribute names?

this didn't work.....

[RiiG]

is there any way to remove the quotes from around the variable in the selector above?